Hello everyone.

If you are like me, you are itching to hear feedback about this exciting new scanner. I have mine now and have finished initial testing.

First, I have to compliment the technical staff at Shining 3D for helping me with some instability issues I was having. They managed so far to fix the problem with a very small amount of information on my end so I'm very impressed with their technical support, they also responded the same day (at night) so they were fast too. This is a company on the other side of the world that speaks another language. I've had worse customer service in my own city.

I will spend more time detailing my experiences with this scanner later, but for now this is what I've found:

The turntable mode isn't nearly as useful, at least for me, as I would have thought it was going to be. The angle the table turns per scan is so large that the surface of the part had large voids when I use this mode. If you were scanning a part that didn't have any deep voids or was relatively simple, like a near spherical shape or a piston the table will probably work fine as it is. I have proposed that the software have an option to specify how many scans there will be per full rotation (thus determining angle) but I think Shining would like to focus on any instability problems more right now. I hope with more feedback from users we can get options like this added to the software, I guess we will have to see.

Another drawback of the turntable mode is when the software decides to mesh the scan. In the videos they demonstrate adding another scan rotation to the model to add areas that were missed after the initial scan. It would be nice if the software would hold off the mesh-closing until after all additional scans have taken place. Not only would this save time, but the model would look better too, at least in theory.

Free scan mode is great. You scan the part and as long as you have decent overlap, the software auto aligns much better than other software programs I have used. How well this works and the overall quality of the scans this unit takes easily pays for the machine. Where you have to be careful is with the colors of the part. Due to the nature of white light SLS and this setup, distinctly different colors will translate to actual surface deviation that isn't there. The easiest solution is to get a scanning spray that makes the whole part matte and uniform in color. Cast finishes on aluminum parts seem to scan very well and have a great color and finish as is, just for reference. If the part has black or reflective areas on it, likely you will get no data at all from those areas. This unit is pretty sensitive to color, though it does have a simple setting in the software to help compensate for bright and dull colors, and it does work, just forget about really dark colors. (Or colours, as we spell it here in Canada).

Where this software is both really good and a little frustrating is with the meshing following scanning. Having played a bit with meshing software before I must say this is very impressive in how automated it is. It just seals up the model and your done. No menus, no messing around. This is great, when that is what you want. When it isn't great is when you really only wanted to scan a surface and just have that mesh for reference. No matter what you do (as far as I can tell anyway) the software will mesh up the scans into a solid before you can save. This may not be a huge deal as I can work around this with my modeling software but still it would be nice to have it optional, as the meshing to a solid takes time too, sometimes several minutes.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm the only one that wasn't completely clear on this when I was initially thinking of investing in this scanner, this unit is not in any way handheld. Yes the new stand can be used as a handle for carrying it around but you can't scan with this scanner in your hand, this also means that you can't really scan anything that moves either. If you were planning on scanning people with this they better be able to be absolutely still for quite a while. Even a single scan takes several seconds. I was a little surprised how long the scanning itself takes, as many other SLS scanners are way faster (They are also way more money so I can live with it). Also, from my experimentation with other scanners, handheld always seems to come at a loss of accuracy vs that same unit stationary. Just something to keep in mind.

In summary, this is an amazing scanner/software package for the price. The time the alignment processes save you alone make this software much better than many others out there. Even manually aligning a scan is dead simple, and fast. I have built alignment spheres and spent hours aligning scans from other units. This scanner doesn't need alignment markers of any kind and alignment is automatic and accurate so what little extra time it takes per scan is easily saved in post processing. The software is very deceiving... it seems basic because you can't really change settings, and there are very few options to speak of. Shining did this on purpose to make it easier to use. Despite how basic the software appears, it is very powerful and well thought out. It could use a few more options but for anyone that was worried the software was a deal breaker I can assure you it is well matched to the scanner. I know I've said it many times already, its scan alignment abilities are excellent.

I highly recommend this scanner, and I hope all of you that are eagerly awaiting your scanner will enjoy it as much as I am!

Regards,
Dave
NERV
Calgary, Alberta, Canada