What's Opinion on the Matterform 3D Scanner?

[donny]

I just saw this scanner. I was going to buy the Digitizer from Makerbot, but saw this and it intrigued me. The Matterform was an indiegogo project several months ago, and it raised $471,000, which I thought was crazy awesome.

Does anyone know specifically how this compares to the digitizer as far as specs go? It's priced slightly better at $579.

Features at a glance:

• High resolution scan created with a high definition camera and dual lasers.
  
• All scanners are fully assembled and tested prior to shipping. There are no kits here.
  
• Easy folding design makes storage or transport simple.
  
• Quick scans. Multiple quality settings can be chosen but an average scan is 3 minutes.
  
• Looks awesome. Shoots lasers.
  
• Scan objects up to 190mm x 190mm x 250mm (7.5" diamter x 9.75" height)
  
• Dual stepper motors for full software control over the scan bed and the z-axis.
  
• See the point cloud being captured in real time!
  
• Full version of software included for PC, Mac or Linux.
  
• .STL, .OBJ, and point cloud .PLY formats
  
  
• NEW! Color Scans! Due to overwhelming success we'll add color scanning to the software!
  

[Geoff]

I hope the quality is as good as they tout, I'm yet to see a 3D scanner that actually produces detailed scans. Makerbots digitizer leaves alot to be desired so I am hopeful for this one.

[Luv2Fight]

This looks great, but it will all come down to the detail that this scanner is able to obtain from objects. I don't think there is a scanner out there yet that I would think is worth spending this kind of money on. Hopefully Matterform makes that scanner. I'd love to hear some first hand reviews on this.

[MessierGoal]

Does anyone know when the Matterform goes on sale to the general public? Have they started shipping to backers yet?

[che]

@MessierGoal we are still waiting ... no news about the shipping. the only good thing about the delay is that the backers supposedly will have no shipping costs whatsoever

[Hall_of_Famer]

@MessierGoal we are still waiting ... no news about the shipping. the only good thing about the delay is that the backers supposedly will have no shipping costs whatsoever

Oh wow, I thought they were already out. Are they past their initial ship date that they promised?

[che]

@Hall_of_Famer , loooooong time ago, but because almost every project that come from crowdfunding platforms has delays we are waiting ....

[The_Critter]

I'm guessing you are a backer che? Any clue when these will start to ship? I'm sure they've given some sort of update by now.

[che]

here it is.

Drew Cox posted an announcement 17 hours ago

Timeline!

From a guy who has no patience - thank you for being patient. I quite honestly have butterflies every time I think how close we are to shipping these to you.
The full timeline of our journey together is online and available for you to see: Past, Present and of course, Future. The timeline includes our projections for final manufacturing and shipping, from our factory in China all the way to your door.
If you ordered a scanner and are looking for your individual shipping date, your order status will be updated once your order has been manufactured.
We’ll be continuously adding things to the timeline as we reach each milestone, so stay tuned.
In the next 2 weeks, we’ll be looking for the most eager, most excited, most pumped backers we have to help us QA our first 50 scanners. More details soon!

View the timeline here.
http://www.matterform.net/timeline

[rojer]

As an FYI (from their website blog):

Scammer Alert!

Posted by Matterform on Monday February 10, 2014 in Updates, News
Hi everyone,

We wanted to let you know that there appear to be some scam websites selling our scanner. We've had a couple brought to our attention by backers, but there could be more. We're seeing what we can do about it (contacting their ISPs, etc) but at the moment there isn't a lot we can offer by way of protection other than warning you here.

If you're ordering a scanner and aren't sure if you're getting it from a legitimate Matterform dealer, go ahead and email us at info@matterform.net and we'll confirm for you.

Alternatively, you can always just pre-order from us at https://www.matterform.net/review