Terrible Scans with MetroX and Revoscan 5.6.7 for MetroX

Discussions Metro Series
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I come from 20-years of I.T., so my tech savvy is pretty good. My shop PC is running a 13th gen i7, 2TB M.2 Samsung drive, 64GB memory, and a 12GB 4060 nVidia GPU. More than sufficient to run the scanner and software.

I purchased my MetroX about 3 weeks ago. I had read all the documentation before it arrived, had pre-installed the software (which gave me all thumbs up), and upon setting up the scanner, went ahead and calibrated it first thing. The second thing I did was do a Feature Scan Auto Turntable with all Auto Exposures and all 5 turntable revolutions setup with their defaults to scan the provided figurine. To say it didnā€™t come out remotely like the sample file would be an understatement. I tried switching GPU to CPU, Different heights with the scanner on the tripod, manually scanning without the turntable, different lighting (more and less), different outlets, different USB3 ports, lowering speeds and disabling internal fans in my case, verifying that no USB device can be auto-disabled in Device Manager. I tried markers and marker scans on it and other simple objects. Today I received scan spray (blue lid) and tried that (not a fan - itā€™s crazy sensitive and sheds powder at the merest touch and is impossible to get markers or sticker pads to hold items in place to stick to).

The figurine was the best of all my scans despite how terrible with all its missing areas. Trying to scan some simple gears or even just a small plastic hose insert for a sprayer gearbox all fail miserably, no matter the scan type and settings or whether I use markers or spray. If I try manually scanning I get hundreds of floating data points sitting mid-air despite there being no dust or circulation or the lighting.

This screenshot is a perfect example. There are 2 objects in this image - one is the white plastic gear with itā€™s metal rod and one of the small hose inserts holding it up ( I have tried straight up with the gear and rod with the gear high AND low; gear laying at an angle with the long end of the rod touching the turntable or the white or the black surfaces I have tried laying items on with and without markers and spray, etc.). It is on the turntable and the scanner on the tripod. The distance gauge lands mostly in the middle of the ā€˜Excellentā€™ parameter, though jumps high and low. This is the third scan, hence the 1218 Frames, and each time I start the scan again to try and get more green data points I tweak something, like exposure or scanner height, just to try and capture more. But after 6 scans now, thatā€™s as good as it gets. If you were to look at it from the top of the gear looking down, it looks like the scanner is seeing triplicate and the round end of the rod isnā€™t remotely round.

Iā€™m at my wits end. Iā€™ve spent probably 20+ hours trying to get this to work, and it isnā€™t. At all. And Iā€™m getting ready to send it back for a refund unless someone can tell me what the actual Sam Hill is going on and how to fix it!

This all started because 4 years ago I spent $400 for a 7-gallon push sprayer because I live rurally and have a very long gravel drive that has way too many weeds for a hand sprayer. I spray twice a year, as well as my neighbors, and itā€™s a breeze. But this spring I took it out after winterizing it, went to spray my neighbors massive gravel drive first, and nothing happened. After tearing it apart I found one of the gearbox gears had disintegrated. I contacted the company. They stopped making this model in '19 and wanted me to pay $800 for a newer model. I just wanted the $5 part. The claim they didnā€™t outsource but made all their own parts. I asked for CAD drawings of the gear. They couldnā€™t find them - yeah, right - but magically found the very last of the model I already had and happily offered it to me for $200. I had no choice, but swore once I had it I would 3D scan every part so people could print their own parts for free rather than let that company gouge them. And WHY did my gear disintegrate? After taking apart the gearbox I found they filled it full of red lithium grease, which isnā€™t remotely compatible with plastics. So theyā€™re basically guaranteeing their products will break so you have to reach out for parts. Quite the scam. Iā€™m not okay with that. So I decided to do something about it. But I needed a scanner that had a very low degree of variance, hence my settling on the MetroX. But right now Iā€™m not happy with that decision and am hoping someone can cure my ills.

Thanks for any help!

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you need to use a matte spray for this scanning mode (subsurface light scattering)

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As stated, Iā€™ve already tried that, and every other means of scanning, with and without scanning spray and markers. They come out exactly the same, no matter how I scan them - manually or automatically.

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Set the depth camera to ā€œManuelā€ (about 6).

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Hi @inSohmniac

This looks wrong indeed , you should be able to capture the whole rotation at only 35 frames per angle and no more is needed per angle.

Also the RGB camera is highly overexposed , I donā€™t know the light environment situation your scanning in but I would reduce it if possible , stay away from direct sunlight and direct window light as it can interfere with the blue light.

Please try to scan using Laser mode and marker , capture around 8000-10000 frames for best results , the laser mode is different technology and it captures only 800K points per frame compared to 7 milion in feature and Auto mode the reason why laser mode require so much frames compared to Auto mode .

But beside the tips , the results you showing on your screenshot are not accurate and I expecting something is off here .

It may be hardware issue , as you should get perfect results with just 35 frames already on one angle 360Ā° in Auto mode

Please check the laser mode as well as in your case it will not even require 3D spray and if you encounter the same issue please contact customer@revopoint3d.com
For hardware check , you can include link to this thread for reference .

Remember the RAW preview is only for reference on your screen , the actual files will be produced after Fusing your scan but from what I see it is failure.

Please donā€™t waste your time and submit a ticket via email direct to the technical support.

2 Likes
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Yes, my shop is kind of bright, I guess. Iā€™ve always been a sunshine person, curtains open every day. I did try scans without the lights on, but the sun shone through my shop windows.

So, today I waited until dark. I scanned in complete darkness with nothing but my monitors for light, and with some indirect and low lumen light in other tests. But same issue.

Also, for Proschi3D, I set my Depth Camera to 6. As you can see from the provided images, nothing changes, so Iā€™m thinking PUTV is absolutely right - a hardware issue. Although, if I run low-light and leave things on CPU instead of GPU, at some point RevoScan crashes with a generic error ID of 1000. With GPU as the setting I can run it all day without a crash. Annoyingly weird. I was hoping the event ID would at least point me to something. Nope. Not even any indirect events that might tell me if the software was the issue instead of hardware. So yeah, Iā€™m betting hardware.

My computer is a few feet away from my scanner setup, so I canā€™t really get any screen grabs doing manual scans without the scanner pointing off into nowhere and creating a psychedelic tracer of movement on the screen instead of my results, which seems to me to also indicate a hardware issue since that seems more like single-shot imaging rather than line or cross-line live imaging, which is what Iā€™m using when manual scanning.

As you can see from the first image and looking straight onto the top of my gear, the shaft isnā€™t a little round spot like it should be, but oddly shaped and elongated sideways. I tried a color image to see if that somehow showed better imaging, but from the side-and-down view it clearly shows all those random floating artifacts above and around the gear and shaft that I referenced in my original post. I went ahead and created an OBJ file from the color file but couldnā€™t upload it, so posted its JPG file as the last image, and as you can see, even though thereā€™s not nearly enough frames itā€™s still just hot garbage.

So, yeah, not an impressive first foray into Revopoint. Not by a longshotā€¦

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1 Like
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Try scanning with markers and limit yourself to 36 frames

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Sorry to have that bad experience , but trust me it can do excellent job , MetroX is my favorite scanner from them all especially Auto Mode that can provide me details at the level of a very expensive scanner that I could not afford neither want to spent on it.

But seeing your latest results it donā€™t looks good not even closer .
You should have perfect 360 Ā° angle scan with 35 frames to begin with .

I am scanning my coins with just 12 frames in Auto Mode and perfect results , it can pick up as small details as skin pores so your results are definitely not what you should get .

It looks to me like completely out of calibration level. And if after calibration still the same then definitely hardware issue.

The Depth Exposure depends of the material youā€™re scanning , normal white to gray color surfaces are ok at setting 1 in Auto Mode as long you donā€™t get too many red areas, at 6 would be too much , how darker the material how higher the exposure level should be for Depth Cam.

There is seriously not much tips left for you and donā€™t looks like user error at all , Auto mode is the easiest way to capture you donā€™t need to be genius to do that..

I am sure the team will help you out fixing this bad experience in no time .

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This is weird indeed. Have you tried to scan in auto-turnable mode, but in marker mode? (same precautions regarding light, using scanning spray, etcā€¦) Is there any difference?

Is the object moving/sliding during the scanning process, or is it fixed and only rotates with the turntable?

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At this point and being less than a week out from my Amazon return date, I went ahead and sent it in for a replacement. Iā€™ve had horrible support experiences with some of my shop devices, like 3D printers and lasers. My OMTech C02 laser was too huge for me to box back up and return, so I basically wound up replacing every single component until it worked again and it took 3 months, because no matter how detailed my troubleshooting emails were to support, theyā€™d ignore them and send a single question response asking something Iā€™d already covered in my original support request, and always in the middle of the night because their China time zone and my U.S. one were the complete opposite. I donā€™t do that anymore. Too many people are averse to reading so they miss all the details. I scour forums, learn everything there is to know, and when things donā€™t work, I send them back for a replacement now.

As to the 3 responses since my last post: As I stated, I HAVE scanned with markers, in Marker AND Feature scan, with AND without the turntable, in Full Field, Parallel Lines, and Cross Lines. And yes, those items were held firmly in place with project tape dots since I donā€™t have any blue tack and didnā€™t want to order and wait for any. I watched everything like a hawk to make sure there was zero movement during any motion. I DID run a single turntable rotation several times, and each around 35 frames, and they looked promising from their backed-off screen projection because there was a lot of green, but it turned out that once zoomed in that it was just the same garbage cluster of random dots hanging midair and only BARELY and chaotically looking like my item. I did recalibrate twice more since my original calibration out of the box. And the other reason I believe PUTV is correct that itā€™s a hardware issue is, when doing an automated OR manual marker scan I CONSTANTLY received the message that there werenā€™t enough reference markers. That message stayed on screen probably 90% of the time, even with just that small hose insert - which is about 10mm tall and wide - sitting center on the stationary turntable. I used other objects as well that I didnā€™t share images of that range from 3-inches to 12-inches and ranged from very simple shapes to complex ones, set upon the stationary turntable as well as 2 matte colored foam boards from Dollar Tree that are 20x30-inches, one black and one white, and both covered in 6mm markers on one side from corner to corner in the same random pattern and density as on the turntable. And no matter what, 90% of the time that red ā€œNot enough reference markersā€ was displayed across the bottom of the RevoScan screen.

Like I originally posted, Iā€™m good at tech and troubleshooting. This scanner is nothing compared to the wide range of equipment Iā€™d have to fix and get running in the microchip manufacturers plant and offices I worked at before retiring, being responsible for something like 50,000 different pieces of tech. But I also read the entire users manual for the MetroX scanner and RevoScan software before the scanner arrived, as well as watched all the Revopoint videos to be certain how to do something, so I was well versed before I even opened the box. And over the last 3 weeks I scoured forums and videos, and finally stopped in here to scour the help requests. So, Iā€™ve tried everything I knew to try, that I found to try, and everything it made logical sense to try. PUTVā€™s responses helped me realize that yes, indeed, these outcomes are well outside normal parameters and something IS wrong. Though I was fairly certain it was hardware related, they helped me cement that potential as the correct answer.

Iā€™m hoping I do not have remotely the same experience with my replacement. I doubt I will. But should I, Iā€™ll be switching over to a slightly more expensive competitor rather than try to stay faithful to a product that failed me twice.

Thanks all, for your help and insight. But as of now, Iā€™ll try to close the thread as, well, not really ā€œResolvedā€, but identified.

Thanks again, and take care.

1 Like
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Well, apparently I canā€™t close my own post. So can a moderator? Or will it auto-close after X time?

Thanks!

1 Like
Please Advise On Scanning
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Good to hear the replacement is on the way ..

I will close for you the thread now
Let me know in the future how the new replacement perform !

Thank you for your patience and time and really sorry that you have to go through all of it.