Done that while testing … it is good to see the full capacity of your device to it’s limits . I know how far it can go , you have a little room to find out 
I don’t know what kind of magic was put into the Revoscan 5.4.2 update, but it’s got something new going on under the hood.
A tiny triceratops!
Messy mesh alert: I didn’t do any cleanup
This little guy is ~150mm long. It’s a cheap little toy that came with a cheap toy my son got for Christmas. The colors on it are basically just reddish plastic with some black airbrush. But the molding is very detailed, so despite the difficulty to scan, I wanted to take a stab at it. And the update handled it like a pro!
This is a merge of 2 scans. The horns where a pain to scan, and I should have cleaned it up. But that’s the point - all this time trying to perfect my workflow and this update has essentially made it too easy.
Now, the big thing I’ve been working on…
Antique Mirror - Replacement Filigree
In my house we have an antique mirror that’s been missing the bottom filigree (decoration) for as long as I can remember. It’s a large piece of brass, and trying to find a replacement is absurdly expensive. Well, this scan just paid for my Inspire:
- Scanned with the part still on the mirror, using some craft construction paper on the mirror and wall behind to prevent IR reflections
- 3 Scans, merged
- I scanned this while standing on a step ladder and stretching on my tip-toes. Not a scanning best practice, but still got a really good result
- Fused using Advanced at 0.2mm because I’m a glutton for punishment who should really start trying the recommended settings
- The flashing on from the casting process left a little bit of artifacting for me to clean up, took about 15min.
First the part I had to reproduce
It’s pretty large, a bit over 300mm long, but exactly what the Inspire is meant for I believe.
The results!
The part just finished printing as I was typing up this post 
Now all that’s left is for me to clean to remove the supports, fix a little spot where the supports failed, and give it a sand and paint job!
I have to stress, this right here is what made me want to get a 3D scanner in the first place. I’d tried to reproduce this in the past with photogrammetry and the results were, well, not good but I scanned this part last night, meshed it this morning, and it’s now less than 24 hours later and I have a replacement part in hand.
tl;dr In less than 24 hours I was able to reproduce a missing, expensive to replace part of an antique. My Inspire just paid for itself. At least that what I’m telling myself
Edit:
Did a quick bit of post processing and I’m just thrilled
3 Likes
I think I’ve finally hit my goal of hitting the limit of what my Inspire can capture and I couldn’t be happier.
Today’s scan:
Tyrannosaurus Rex Toy
It’s about 175mm (6in) in length at most.
- Standard Object Mode
- Various angles and distances
- Came out to >3k frames, edited down to 2800.
- Standard Fusion at 0.1mm
- A lot of noise. Fair amount of manual cleanup.
- Did not smooth or overlap. Very minimal isolation used. I wanted to retain as many points as possible. Points = data. More data = more quality, assuming you only keep the good data.
- Final point cloud contains 5,147,127 points.
- Meshed at quality 6
- Minimal cleanup here for some stray polygons.
At this point I stared at my screen wondering if I’d pulled off some kind of witchcraft.
The silver model is the exported PLY mesh loaded into Microsoft 3D builder with a metalic material applied. I find the contrast shows a lot more detail than what you’d see in Revoscan (though the new materials are very nice, this is just a personal preference).
I had no idea I could get this from my little scanner but man I’m happy right now.
3 Likes
Experimentation time!
I’ve been continuing to try a bunch of different things.
First, a couple Pops I scanned with my ̶P̶o̶p̶ Inspire.
(clever I know)
Black Rabbit Funko Pop
- Dark Object, Feature Tracking
- Then why does it have color?
Because I colored it. There’s a bunch of different ways you can paint the models you scan. Blender, which I’ve used on and off since forever. ZBrush, which I have but have no idea how to use yet… Heck even some 3D Printer slicers let you import a model, paint it for color printing, and export!
But I used Paint 3D in Windows. If you can use MS Paint, you can use this.
Just… please simplify the mesh before importing. It takes a very long time to load and save otherwise. Trust me on this.
Badman Vegeta Funko Pop
- Dark Object Feature Tracking
- Paused and resumed with different exposure settings
- Turntable
- Advanced 0.2 and Quality 6
So, it can be an absolute pain to capture some models that have a mix of dark and light features. Vegeta here was no exception. But I’ve also been on an adventure to get the best quality textures I can out of the Inspire (despite the scan above… I experiment).
So what I did for this object was a quick full scan with exposure cranked to 10. This absolutely over exposed everything but the hair and eyes. But I made sure to get the hair completely, then made note of what my frame count was.
From here, I paused, adjusted the exposure so the rest of the model was properly exposed, and contined scanning. This absolutely will result in a mess of a point cloud. That is until you…
Go to keyframe editor.
Your frames and points are already all aligned. So what I did here was select only the keyframes from the first pass over exposed scan,use the lasso tools select only the hair and eyes (since they were fairly clean and easy to select), invert the selection, and delete everything else. Then saved the edited keyframes and returned to the original workflow.
From here I fused, cleaned up, and textured as normal.
The results are below.
I made the mistake of adjusting the exposure for the RGB camera between passes as well. I should have set this properly first, as now the hair is over-exposed. But still, the workflow proved successful!
Ingress Darsana Patch Scan
Let’s scan things smaller than we’re supposed to scan again.
- Marker Mode
- Single Frame Capture
- Advanced Fusion 0.2 / Meshed at quality 6
This little patch is roughly 50mm x 20mm x 1mm
Normally scanning something this small will just get the scanner to yell at you. Even in marker mode, you’ll get errors about there not being enough cloud points.
So what I did was clutter up the scan plate with a crumpled up receipt, a very small rubber ducky, and part of a failed 3d print. What this resulted in is plenty of points to capture. Once I captured my frames, I fused, deleted all the unwanted guests, and now we have a nice scan of a patch from a geeky game I used to play.
I’m fairly pleased with the results of both the scan and the texture on this one - the patch is shiny yet captured well, and the model even captured a little bit of the stitching. Good job, Inspire!
Wooden Puzzle Thing
Roughly 100mm in all dimensions
- Marker Mode
- Continuous Capture
- Mess of a mesh
This was an experiment in texture capture - so the mesh is… not nice.
I wanted to see how much detail I could capture using the RGB Camera on something with a lot of same-color surface detail:
I’m absolutely floored by the vertex colors here. Whiles not insanely high in detail, for a small puzzle this is fantastic.
The color image texture has a ton of detail, but one issue becomes apparent:
I forgot to turn off auto white balance
Something about the color of the wood made the RGB camera unhappy. Next time I’ll remember to keep my white balance set manually.
Large Head Flower Pot Thing
An ornamental thing in my house. Looked like a good candidate to scan.
- Scanned using mobile app
- Transferred to PC for processing
- Handheld, feature tracking, on kitchen counter
- Advanced Fusion at 0.3, meshed quality 6 at 0.41
Honestly, I just wanted to scan something, wanted to see how using the mobile app would impact my workflow in terms of capture, and if it would hurt the texture capture at all.
I’m happy to say it didn’t! Not my most impressive scan by any means, but another case of being pleasantly surprised by the vertex colors once again.
I’m very happy with how well the flowers were captured as well.
That’s all! Keep on scanning!
4 Likes
Great scans Ken !
So over the weekend I 3D printed and painted a bust of Moon Knight, and I figured it would actually make a pretty good scan, but also a good comparison tool…
(my painting skills aren’t super great - don’t judge)
Moonknight Bust
Comparison: Single Frame Capture vs Continuous
- Aside from capture method, identical settings used for both
- Feature Tracking
- Advanced Fusion at 0.2mm
- Mesh Quality 6
These were done without manual cleanup. I normally will spend a good amount of time cleaning up my point clouds - that was not the case this time.
Reason behind experiment: There’s a lot of confusion in terms of quality when it comes to number of frames captured, or how many frames are required.
With a complex item like this, with a lot of deep pockets and hard to capture geometry, I felt it would be a good candidate for a comparison.
Single Frame Capture
The images below are from a single frame capture with 164 frames.
Continuous Capture
The images below are from Continuous Capture with 4064 Frames
Comparison Results:
Visually, pretty similar end result at first glance. A lot of this comes down to the Advanced Fusion doing a great job.
But look closer, starting with the raw point cloud.
The amount of noise present in the second one is pretty extreme. Aside from the edge details being fuzzier, it’s super noticeable in the hood, and becomes noticeable between the arms and torso. The Continuous Capture one also has a defect under the gold belt, where the base meets the bust. I believe the reflectivity of the base (which is unpainted) contributed to this. The reflections caused more errors to accumulate here.
Revoscan does a great job of cleaning this up with simple workflow, however software can only go so far. The final mesh on the over-captured model has a slight lack of detail, and softness around the hard edges.
And of course some beauty shots:
4 Likes
I decided to tackle a couple items that are typical of the “hard to scan” category. One for material, one for geometry.
Why? “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!”
Basically, challenge myself with the hard scans to make myself better at scanning all around.
Challenge 1:
Light Fixture
Super basic geometry. No features to track. Complex internal features. Reflective everything.
Let’s do this.
- Marker Tracking
- Tried Feature tracking just for giggles. Yeah, no way.
- Single Frame Capture - 130 frames
- Advanced Fusion at recommended 0.31mm
- Meshed at Quality 5 0.27mm
The results:
I gotta say, the Inspire and Revoscan together kicked some serious butt here. Yeah, inside the light socket is a little messy, but the fact it pulled this off ao cleanly makes me very happy.
Challenge 2:
Cast Iron Wall Hand
Yeah, this was hard. If anyone reads this: Cast Iron likely demands some kind of scanning spray or something to make the surface easier to capture. Apparently cast iron eats infrared light for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even on Dark Object mode with exposure set to 10, this did not want to show up on the scanner. But, I’m stubborn.
- Dark Object / Feature Tracking
- Single Frame Capture - 145 Frames
- Advanced Fusion 0.3mm
- Meshed at Quality 6
The Results:
This one pleasantly shrprised me. It was really hard to get to show up without having the scanner almost too close, but I managed to capture it.
Something both these scans did as well was make me really appreciate vertex color capture. If I were scanning with the intent for asset creation, the vertex colors would make a pretty good foundation so I can add my own material settings, specular maps, etc. (Though if that was my goal, I’d probably just use a polarized light setup…)
The other thing these scans did was make me very impatient waiting for my Attblime ABX Zero to get delivered…
5 Likes
So I haven’t had much to share lately. Got hit with by that nasty virus that hasnt gone away, then work had me busy and travelling (and wishing I’d packed my Inspire with me).
But recently I got myself some ATTBLIME ABX Zero. I purchased the bulk container, to use in my airbrush (thanks for the recommendation @PUTV!)
Took me a few tries to get the best spray setup (~20-25psi with a 0.5mm nozzle seems to be my sweet spot), along with learning I kept my office far too warm, but now that I’ve nailed it, this stuff has been amazing!
Glass Skull Bottle
- Single Frame Capture, Feature Tracking
- My normal 0.2mm fusion and 6 quality mesh
- No cleanup needed, because scanning spray is magic.
The photos below show the scan, a poorly painted 3d print done from the bottle, and the skull bottle about 30min after scanning and again some hours later, once the spray had evaporated.
This thing wouldnt even show on dark object scanning previously. I’m a scanning evangelicist now.
Foldable Phone Inner Frame / Battery
- Single Frame Capture
- Marker Mode
- 0.2mm fusion, mesh quality 6
Ever try to scan something milled from aluminum, with small reflective flexible PCBs and a silver battery with a black label? Yeah, not easy.
Until ya spray it!
I’m just super pleased with this one.
Hyperkin Game thing
- Single Frame Capture
- Marker Mode
- 0.2mm fusion, mesh quality 6
This is one of those “pop your phone into it” gadgets to play retro games on. In case you haven’t caught on by now, I’m a big ole nerd.
This was also sprayed before scanning, although I missed a spot on the D-Pad, visible in the images. But there’s something else I did before this scan.
I recalibrated my scanner. Just not strictly “by hand.”
So by now you’ve probably noticed I 3d print a lot. I have a handful of printers, one of which has 400mm of Z axis travel. I made a mount to hold the scanner on the gantry, and put the calibration board on the bed. I then used the jog controls to move the bed as needed, the necessary distance, to get as close to perfect calibration as I can. Probably overkill, but I live by the moto, “If you’re going to do it, might as well over do it.”
Honestly it probably had no real impact in the end, but it was a ton of fun to do too, so why not?
Halloween Decoration
- Single Frame Capture
- Marker Mode
- 0.2mm fusion, mesh quality 6
But its February!? Why do you have halloween decorations out!?!?
Because they’re on clearance right now, which makes it a great time to get some spooky stuff to scan for super cheap. 
No spray or anything fancy this time. Didnt even do much cleanup on the scan. This was a “just for fun” scan, and it was definitely fun.
Now, I need to find more stuff to scan…
5 Likes
I’ve been way more active on the Inspire Facebook group lately, but there are many people who aren’t on there / do not use Facebook, so I should be more equitable and share my recent scans!
Lego Disassembly Tool
I wanted to try and capture something that relies on being very dimensionally accurate, plus test something else I was working on, so I figured this was a great candidate.
- Single Frame Capture
- Marker Tracking
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
- Vertex coloring. I just like it more on this model.
The thing I was testing is an angled adapter for the printable plate many use for the round marker pad. It’s basically a 45 degree angled skirt that clips on the the edges and allows the placement of more markers. The reason behind this was to increase the visible markers when scanning from an angle, rather than starting a second scan with the objext from a different angle. it worked great, and when I’m done making a couple small tweaks the the CAD file I’ll share it and the source file for anyone else who wants to have some fun with it.
Nintendo DS
- Single Frame Capture
- Scanning Spray Used
- Marker Tracking
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
This is just a quick and dirty scan I did of my original NDS I’ve had since launch week when I was a kid. I hit it with some scan spray and did a quick scan, because sometimes you just need to scan something 
Bird Statuette
- Continuous Capture
- Feature Tracking
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
A little ~6in tall iron bird statuette from a bookshelf in my house. Was never able to scan this thing previously, but ATTBLIME Zero let me get a great scan of this little guy.
3D Printed and Painted Stormtrooper Helmet Bust
- Single Frame Capture
- Feature Tracking
- Dark Object Mode
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
Challenge mode! This is a roughly 4in tall 3d printed piece, with black primer and silver Rub n’ Buff applied. Going through my models, I’ve found that metallic rubbing compounds like that do NOT like to scan well. You basically need to crank the exposure a decent amount. However the silver will randomly reflect and cause extreme over exposure. The only secret here is to take your time, scan from multiple angles, and be prepared to use the keyframe editor to manually clean out the over exposed portions. Time intensive, but man I love how this one came out.
Butane Torch
- Single Frame Capture
- Marker Tracking
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
- Scanning Spray Required
This one was something I’ve wanted to scan for a while. I’ve been modelling customer pegboard holders for just about every tool I have, but this combo of black body and reflective model, along with the simple geometry on a good portion of it, made is a real challenge previously. Thankfully, the scanning spray allowed me to get around the issues tracking the simple geometry by using marker tracking, and in turn finally get a capture of this thing. In addition, I got a surprisingly good capture of the inside of the fire-comes-from-here part, which I wasn’t aiming for, but still got a good result. A happy accident on that part.
Handle to 30ml adhesive syringe applicator
- Single Frame Capture
- Feature Tracking, scanned by hand using the app and transfered to PC
- Fused at 0.2mm Advanced and Meshed at quality 6
- Merge of 2 scans
I’ve been working on a side-project, engineering a low-cost / repeatable method of depositing an exact amount of highly viscous material. These handheld applicators are cheap, but work like a caulk gun and did not have the consitent accuracy I want. But the tool had promise. My solution? Take it apart, scan it, and now I can adapt it to suit my needs! Normally this kind of reverse engineering takes hours of repeated measurements with calipers, a depth gauge, etc. But my scanner just gave me a high-quality scan I can pop into Fusion360 and build into a parametric model without issue.
This was definitely one of those “oh heck yes” moments that makes me love this scanner.
In addition, I’ve been scanning things I wish I could share but, at least for now, cannot. However I’ll be looking for analogs to those items to scan and share, because you’d be surprised just how versatile this little scanner can be…
4 Likes
Beautiful scans Ken , thank you for sharing !
1 Like
I’ve been insanely busy lately, but had a little project fall into my lap that was perfect for my scanner.
Scoop Attachment for Pod Cannister
- Feature Tracking
- Continuous Capture
- Fused at 0.37mm
- Meshed at 0.35mm
Nothing fancy. Not going for high detail or insane texture capture this time (no color data at all, actually). This was for a purely function reference to model around.
I like CAD. I’m decent at CAD. I do not like trying to recreate curves / organic shapes / splines / etc. Calipers, protractor, depth gauge, and time can make it happen, but I do not like it. I’m impatient, it’s slow, and takes too many iterations in many cases to get it juuuuuuust right.
Solution? SCAN IT!
Roughly 30min from scan to file sent to printer.
- Scan the reference model
- Cut to just the ring and decimate to low poly
- Import to CAD software of choice (OnShape for myself, lately)
- A few sketches, a revolve, a loft, and some screw holes later… (and fillets / chamfers. We’re fancy here, you know)
And now I have a scoop.
The mating surfaces fit PERFECTLY on the first try. I didn’t even print a reference part to check fit, I just sent it. Overall, extremely pleased with how this came out.
Now, to find more projects…
3 Likes
Great job Ken , keep posting , always pleasure to see your new posts !
2 Likes
Stuck on hold for a while this afternoon, so I decided to throw out a quick scan.
Ukulele Tuning Knob
- Feature Scanning
- Small pieces of crumpled paper added to turntable to provide additional features to track and cloud points to capture (prevents the “not enough cloud points” error)
- Sprayed with ABX Zero prior to scanning
- Fused at Quality 6 / 0.2mm
- Meshed at 0.2mm as well
This was a quick demo to share that the Inspire can knock out some very fine details and small objects. The object is 40mm in length and has a lot of undercuts and small surfaces that the Inspire still captured without breaking a sweat.
This is a great example of a “ready to use” mesh that you can use in a project or pull into CAD software for reference.
(I just wished I didn’t print it in black filament…)
3 Likes
Excellent results Ken , you bring INSPIRE to a level not often seeing in our community. Great job !
Thank you for sharing !
I love my INSPIRE, one of my favorite to go scanner , never disappointed either .
1 Like
Something I like to do is create custom solutions for organization / storage of my tools and odds and ends. Modeling fkr some objects can be hard though, so this is where my Inspire shines.
Both these models were scanned today with the goal of creating custom storage for them.
Scan settings for both were:
- ABX Zero Scanning Spray used
- Feature Tracking
- Fused at 0.2mm
- Meshed at Quality 6
The only differences were that the shaver was a continuous capture, wheras the rotary tool was captured in Single Shot mode.
Electric Shaver
A couple of boogery spots I missed with the spray, but more than meets my needs and came out fantastic either way.
Rotary Tool
I plan on making a charging cradle and storage case for this one. (Maybe even build charging into the case?)
(And yes, using 3D Builder for image capture again, because it just shows details so well!)
3 Likes
Excellent results Ken 
Fantastic results, Ken, and a great pleasure to see something other than toys being scanned! A great way to build a storage unit - simply create a block, set the model in it and subtract. I think even I could handle that LOL!
1 Like
The Inspire isn’t my only scanner anymore, but it still gets its chances to shine!
Recent scan:
Bioshock 2 Rosie Figurine
Scanning workflow: all mobile. No desktop at all.
The entire scanning, fusion, and meshing process was done using the recently updated Android app on my 4 year-old tablet.
I then imported it into Nomad Sculpt, setup some lighting and surface roughness / metallicy (is that a word?) and popped out a quick turntable.
I didn’t get to do my normal manual cleanup, so this is an example of a mobile only, automated tools only, output. I’m pretty darn happy.
1 Like