I’m very glad to see that this scanner has such an active community, so I decided to share also my personal experience.
I am a mechanical engineer and my intention is to use the POP2 as a reverse engineering tool. So far I have experience scanning with a xbox kinnect DIY scanner, which was interesting as a DIY project but the results were completely useless for any kind of reverse engineering project. Professionally I also have used point clouds from high-end professional scanners, so I kind of have some experience with both extremes of the scanning spectrum.
I received my POP2 few days ago and I tried some quick scans which straight away surprised me a lot for the high quality of the final mesh. Yes, it might not be as easy to use as an articulated arm scanner, but for a ridiculous fraction of the price, with some preparation and good technique, I think the final results are really close to what you can expect from a professional high-end scanner.
For my first attempt I decided to try to scan the back of a BMW e90 headlamp. It’s representative of the type of things I want to scan, and it’s challenging enough to understand the limitations of the scanner.
During the first attempt I realised that it struggles with black shiny plastics, so I decided to start again by cleaning the part and using some dry shampoo.
The results are great in my opinion, and perfectly useable for reverse engineering projects. I didn’t reach the very deep areas, but there’s enough data to guess them with a CAD software. And probably disassemblying some of the elements and scanning them separatedly, I could have gotten even better results.
Including meshing and realigning process, overall it took 1h40mins from start to end.
I bought whatever was the cheapest in my local amazon, which in this case was " Batiste Heavenly Volume Dry Champú - 200 ml (1,49€ /100 ml)"
I haven’t tried other dry shampoos, I’m not sure if it makes any difference to be honest. I noticed this one didn’t provide a very thick cover, so I had to make several passes and I ended up using a whole can for just this scan.
I also want to try talc powder and liquid chalk before testing proper scanning spray.
As long as I am scanning my own pieces I don’t mind cleaning it, but I want to test 3d scanning spray to be prepared when I have to scan someone else’s part.
ok will try that as option for big parts and not caring about damage. Now i used for black mat part aesub white spray it done everything nice but cost is way more than you wrote
I’m actually trying the same project at the moment and the texture is extremely poor. However I’ve just set the scanner to dark and tried to scan it as is. While the POP 2 has done a good job scanning the part it’s very rough and does not have clean lines at all so I’ll definitely have to try the dry shampoo tomorrow.
Out of interest when moving your camera roughly what is the speed you would pan left to right/ forward and back in regards to cm/sec or cm/5 sec.
Finally with regards to multiple scans @osdecar what’s your process. Do you do a single horizontal pass a zig zag etc?
