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simonr

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simonr last won the day on November 21 2023

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  1. The distance is important - but most scanners will tell you when the distance is correct. A turntable with a fixed, adjustable scanner is useful for some scanners. Mine needs you to kind of 'paint' the surface - so having it fixed isn't helpful. I do have one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07BJ3FQ9Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title A super-cheap turntable which has been useful for things that are just a bit too heavy to move around - things like a hub assembly. As Fridge suggested, I've used a wheely trolley for bigger things like a 60kW electric motor for a wind machine.
  2. It wouldn't be hard to design a handle + phone holder with a couple of buttons linked to levers which press on the appropriate bit of the phone screen. You can get pen type stiluses which will trigger a touch on a phone screen - so if the lever had the rubber tip from one of these, they could simulate the touch. I downloaded this handle for the Einstar - which makes the thing much more comfortable & stable to use: I re-mixed it a bit, adding the boss on the right which takes a 1/4 Thread insert. I have one of these screws which pokes through te other hole to secure it to the scanner, which, when not in use screws into the thread for storage. EINSTAR HANDLE 2.STL
  3. I don't know! I tend to use it for planar surface & feature extraction - for reverse engineering. For that, it's very useful. Speaking to one of my friends, he says he uses Blender when he's trying to work with 'sucked sweet' (as he put it) type shapes to extract surfaces & bring them in to SW. However, I've never used Blender so have no idea about the workflow
  4. That's true - but it's still pretty clunky to use! I use an add-in called Xtract3D which is better, but still not perfect. Fusion has a much better toolset for dealing with meshes. I've been using Chalk Spray: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Montana-Chalk-Temporary-Marking-Eco-Friendly/dp/B00JEECAEW/ref=sr_1_5 It has the advantage of being available in multiple colours. The scan specific spray always seems to be white, which is great until you want to scan a shiny white thing!
  5. The results look good. I would also be interested to see what kind of measurement accuracy it delivers. It's worth trying with an object you can scan all the way around to see if the scan at the end lines up with that at the start. That's a good test of the cumulative accuracy. Hairspray works quite well for matting down surfaces. You can get chalk spray which is better, but more expensive. Your scanner appears to cope with shiny surfaces a lot better than the einscan - but the more help you can give it, the better the results. I do use retroflective location markers too - but they are surprisingly expensive & you can eat a whole lot of them! I drew & printed a load of these https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5787919/files If you insert a magnet and cover the sides with marker dots, you can scatter them over something you're scanning - but re-use them again & again.
  6. I'll be very interested to know how you get on. I almost ordered one last night - but realised I'd need to upgrade my phone to work with it. Apparently, mine (S10) is too slow / old! If I factor in the cost of the phone, it becomes less attractive.
  7. I used it to scan a replica Roman boat (which was used in Indiana Jones) in order to make a cradle to support it on a motion platform. It's owners were a bit precious about it and we only had to boat for a couple of days filming. I went to their yard to scan it - then we had accurate measurements to build the rig & internal structure for lights, camera etc, knowing it would all fit when it arrived at the Studio. The compound curves of the hull - and that none of the internal beams were particularly straight would have made it near impossible to measure with a tape with the required accuracy! I do often have to survey structures (quite often boats) and for me, this has been a game changer!
  8. The Creality CR Scan Ferret looks surprisingly good - and half the price of mine. Being able to use a phone as the capture device would be very useful for getting in & around vehicle bits. Mine has a long umbilical to my laptop but it needs mains to power the scanner with a chunky power brick at the laptop end. I'm quite tempted to buy one - my only hesitation is the lack of storage in a typical phone. One of my raw scans was over 600GB. Maybe it does something clever to compress the data? A while later... Having watched a few videos about it, the CR-Scan is limited ot 2000 frames per scan, or about 60 seconds of scanning. While this doesn't give enough time to walk around a whole vehicle, you could split it up into multiple scans & stitch them together. The Einstar is only limited by how much storage space you have. My 600GB scan took several hours. This is one component from that scan - an engine from a Willy's Jeep.
  9. That would help - and the software generally has tools to automatically splice scans together. While this is normally used so you can scan both sides of an object, it equally works for side by side, so long as both scans contain a couple of reference points for alignment. One of the mistakes I made at first was confusing resolution for accuracy. If you set very high resolution, say 0.1mm - it just records lots of points, filling up memory very quick. If you set a lower resolution, say 2mm, the precision of the location of the points is just as good, just fewer of them. Now I tend to do a low res scan of the whole of the object and multiple high-res ones for things like mounting centres - then stitch them together at the end.
  10. I have an Einstar Scanner - and it's pretty good for the money. If anything, the software for the scanner is more important than the scanner itself. The Einstar uses the same software as their more expensive Einscan scanners - and as such is also prety good. Bear in mind (also) that you need a PC with a decent amount of memory for it to be useful. I use my laptop with 64GB and it has coped with everything so far. It takes a bit of figuring out - but you can get good results. One of the issues that most of the cheap scanners have is the inaccuracy is cumulative. I tried scanning a Chassis about 10 years ago - and although the scan looked OK, when I tried to turn it into a CAD model, it was obvious that it was twisted & deformed by about 15mm at the opposite corner to where I'd started. The Einstar seems to manage about +/-0.5mm on any two points per metre apart. It's still not perfect but +/-3mm on a chassis is a lot better than +/-15mm.
  11. I thought it was OK to read - and I agree with his style changes! I've test driven one - and thought it was wonderful to drive. I was very tempted to buy one but just couldn't persuade myself I liked the styling of the exterior. Interior is pretty good though. I keep hoping it will grow on me. I'm not seeking for a retro looking Defender, just something that embodies the feeling you get from original Defenders, G Wagons and a few others. They look a lot better covered it accessories to break up the solid colour, but I'm not a fan of covering vehicles in boxes, ladders & stuff. The guy might be on to something, that all it needs is a different paint style, just to break it up rather than to look retro.
  12. If anything, it's become easier! More modern vehicles have more individual networks as well as bridges between them - which limit the amount of data traffic on any one network. My general approach has been to build / write a 2 port bridge and insert it between the ECM and the thing you want to control. All traffic has to flow through the bridge. Initially, you just block individual packets from reaching the device, and look for when it starts to malfuction. This will tellyou the address of the device from the ECM's point of view. The packets sent by the device will give you the addresses of everything it wants to talk to. You then just filter out everything outside that address range. If it continues to work, you know you've got everything. Then it's relatively easy to see which packets change with things like RPM or Temperature. Try waiting for a packet addressed to the device to come from the ECM, change the data and send it on to the device. Some devices require the timing of packets to be accurate - so letting the ECM initiate the transfer, avoids that mostly. By breaking down the problem, it becomes much easier & quicker to solve. This was the last one I made: https://github.com/SimonRafferty/Polaris-GENERAL---CANBUS-Bridge But I've used the same hardware & software configuration several times.
  13. You might imagine me being similar. I have used it, but compared to the modern CAD packages, it felt like a rediculous way to model something! For something free, I would either go for OnShape or Fusion. Onshape is fantastic - and I'd use it professionally, except we're not allowed to use Cloud based software. Fusion is very capable, but lacks a few of the features I use a lot in Solidworks.
  14. The reason is JLR (and other manufacturers) guard this info very closely! I worked for a company who had bought (and it was a LOT of money) the list of CAN PID's for Range Rover. They wouldn't even let me look at it! The NDA appeared to list the specific people permitted to view the data. They were developing the surround-view camara system for JLR & even though they were working on a project for JLR, they still had to buy the info. Even their list was redacted to the extent that some of it had to be reverse-engineered. I was surprised by the level of secrecy! Some & some. Accessing some of the functionality is fairly easy & cheap. Some of it, not so much. At least with something mechanical, you can figure out most of it by looking & measuring. Most of the problems in vehicles are still mechanical or (basic) electrical. It's rare for problems to be with the firmware and often the same firmware can assist in diagnosing the problem. So, for most of problems, the computers just give you another tool to help figure it out. That said, I do like vehicles having CAN networks - just because it gives even more options to hack / improve / repurpose things.
  15. The best option is to print it with the lettering recessed a mm or so, flood it with paint then sand the surface. Another is to print the panel in two pieces. One having the lettering raised from the surface and the other with cut-outs - then press the two together. I've used this for back-lit, illuminated decals. It looked fantastic!
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