MakerBot
is best known for its 3D printers, turning virtual products into real
ones, but the company’s latest hardware to go on sale, the MakerBot
Digitizer, takes things in the opposite direction. Announced back in March,
and on sale from today for $1,400, the Digitizer takes a real-world
object and, by spinning it on a rotating platform in front of a camera,
maps out a digital model that can then be saved, shared, modified, and
even 3D printed itself.
Although the process itself involves some complicated technology and
data-crunching, MakerBot claims that users themselves should be able to
scan in an object in just a couple of clicks. The company includes its
own MakerWare for Digitizer software, which creates files suitable for
both the firm’s own 3D printers and generic 3D files for other hardware.
Calibration is a matter of dropping the included glyph block on the
rotating platter and having the camera run through some preconfigured
tests. After that, you center the object you’re hoping to scan,
selecting whether they’re lightly colored, medium, or dark, and then
waiting until the process is done.
MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner overview:
That takes approximately twelve minutes per
object, MakerBot says, so don’t think of this as the 3D scanner
equivalent of a photocopier. The camera itself runs at 1.3-megapixels
and is paired with two Class 1 lasers for mapping out objects, and the
overall resolution is good for 0.5mm in terms of detail and +/- 2.0mm
for dimensional accuracy. Maximum object size is up to 20.3cm in
diameter and the same in height.
Once you’ve actually run something through the scanner, the core grid
file can be shared directly from the app to Thingiverse.com, or edited
and combined with other 3D files to make a new object altogether.
The MakerBot Digitizer Desktop Scanner is available for order now, priced at $1,400.