[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Aric Rindfleisch. I'm the Executive Director of the Illinois MakerLab. I'm also the instructor of the first course in our 3D Printing Specialization, The 3D Printing Revolution. Well, today I'm stepping in for Carlton and we're taking a look at some high end, big time 3D scanners. And to do that, we're here at the Beckman Institute, on the northern end of the University of Illinois campus. This institute brings together faculty and researchers all across our campus to think about, imagine and do work on big important research challenges. Now, to help them in their efforts, this facility also contains a number of laboratories. One of those labs is the visualization lab or viz lab for short. Viz lab contains some really high-end, cool, expensive 3D scanners. We're going to take a look at the lab, talk to the lab manager, Travis Ross, find out more about them, how they relate to the types of scanners that you've learned about already in this course, and how you can use this technology to turn your ideas into objects. Come on back, let's find the lab. I think I see Travis. Hi Travis. >> Hey Eric. Long time no see. >> Good to see you. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, thanks for coming. >> Would you mind answering a few questions about 3D scanning? >> Not at all, glad to. >> We're inside the Beckman Institute here. This is the institution that was founded here at U of I to be a cross disciplinary research facility for almost every department on campus. The vis lab were resource for researcher here, for grad students, for faculty, for staff across campus but in a institute where you need world class technology to do world class research. You really need places like this that are continually on a cost of visualization technology. There are a few different types of scanners. You have laser base scanners which in the structure like type scanners and you have camera photogrammetric base. So this kind of the three main types of scanners. Now, they all are using cameras to receive light just like any other camera does. It's receiving an image in and then it's what the software is doing internally to then process it into 3D data. Now the way that it's doing that with a laser scanner is it's projecting a laser line or even, it could be a laser pattern. Through a lens and then the camera is typically offset a little bit and then through the software it's seeing the deformation of the laser line pattern on the surface as depth, basically, and then it can convert that into a 3D shape. It's doing that one line at a time. So as it's scanning, reading one line, the object will rotate a little bit. It will do it again. Or it's actually recording video of that object turning behind the laser line. That's where scanners basically were 15 years ago when I started in the technology. Then they moved into structured light, which is what we have here. And this instead of casting a laser line is casting a series of lines structured like digitally projected lines on the object across the surface. So instead of a single line it's using multiple lines so it's able to acquire more data at one time. Think about photogrammetry which is now becoming a more reliable method It's essentially taking stereo images. imagine the way your eyes perceive depth. We're doing that now with two sets of cameras or a camera and two different positions. We're able to then, look at the overlap of those two images and reconstruct depth from that. Any time you need to acquire the shape of an object and then reverse engineer that into a CAD file for design purposes, it's a perfect application. So that's pretty much now every manufacturing firm, every design studio, every animation house, every game studio It's become so saturated in every industry now that you really don't hear anyone who's not doing it at this point. I'll be the first to say 3D scanning is not necessary for every single thing that you need to build a CAD file for, that you need to reproduce in some way. And I've kind of had to learn this the hard way because I always wanted to scan everything around me. Because if you need a copy, that will, let's just scan it. That's not always the case because CAD software is very accessible and fairly easy to use. 3D modeling software is a lot more accessible and easy to use. It just depends on the goals of the project and what the output needs to be. If you need to copy a complicated object that's from the real world, 3D scanning is definitely going to be one of your better options. I've worked at Sony Playstation about eight years ago. And we were there at the beginning of when 3D scanning was being implemented into gaming technology. And the Major League Baseball franchise that's owned by Sony came to my team and said, we want to start 3D scanning the players' heads. So that in game, they look more accurate. So, we did that. In about a three week period of time during spring training, every single major league baseball players head was scanned and all of the coaches and managers were scanned. And we had to do that with a large, large team. And then, it took an entire year to process all of that data. So, now video game technology is based off of real world 3D scan data. It is used no differently whether or not you're acquiring something for digital display on a screen or some kind of 3D output for printing. It starts at the same place. It's just once you scan that data, once you acquire it, how do you want to use it. >> Great, so we've been sitting here. You have this scanner you've been teasing us with in the background. Could you give us a demonstration of how one of your scanners works? >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> Okay. Let's take a look. >> All right. >> Now, we need something to scan. >> Yeah. [CROSSTALK] Let's look around. I don't see anything around here. Wait a minute. I usually carry a dinosaur in my pocket and I happen to have one. >> All right. That'll work great. >> I believe it's a triceratops, if I'm not mistaken. Could you scan Mr. Triceratops? >> We can, absolutely. We can scan just about anything. So, one of the first things I like to do when I'm 3D scanning something is, just kind of look at it and decide, first of all, what volume might work. What is the level of detail that i need to acquire. I just need the basic overall shape. I don't care about the fine little bumps and ripples. I'm okay with this 400 millimeter scan resolution that I have today, because that's actually going to give me at least a point every quarter of a millimeter, every 250 microns. Now if I wanted more resolution with this scanner, I would put on my 100 millimeter range lenses, recalibrate it and then I could get a point every 60 microns. That would probably give me more than enough details on this that I would absolutely need. >> So you point it in the dinosaur and what is this, this is a turn table? >> Yeah. This is what we call a two access rotation stage. We have an access right here that allows the table to tip forward and backward. And then we have an axis right here in the center which just allows the table to rotate this way. And so we can get pretty much all the way around, and close to underneath an object, as we tilt this stage back and forth. But for our purposes today, I'm just going to scan it in this one orientation, just one revolution. I'm not going to clamp it down. I'm not going to tilt the table at this point in time. >> Does it matter how you point them, facing this way or that way? Does that matter at all? >> No, not necessarily. >> Go ahead. >> We can see in this window here an enlarged view of what the camera is seeing. So this is currently what the camera is seeing. And it's filtering out all of the other wavelengths except the blue that is projecting. And so, that's why we're seeing the line patterns so brightly on here. So, we just click start measurement. And so it's going to cycle through its range of projected patterns. And you can faintly see it on the object itself, but you can see it way more clearly on the screen here because the screen is showing us what the camera is actually seeing. So then is rotating and it's going to do the next angle. And how long does this process usually take for an object that size? >> One revolution usually takes about five minutes. >> So five minutes to scan. So what's happening is we are having this blue light shooting these patterns. And we see that captured on the screen. >> So the software's recognizing each one of those line patterns which is a known line in the software and as it sees some sort of object that is deforming that line it'll then recognize that as shape. You don't get to see the end product of that until it's finished going all the way around. But what you'll see is in the end, it has been recognizing everything that it's seeing as distance and shape and turning it into a 3D geometry. >> So, where are we in the process turns out? Were you halfway done? >> Yeah. >> About halfway there. >> About halfway there. >> I see he's spun about half the way around. >> So it's doing its final little alignment. It's unwinding the scanner table. So it always homes it, puts it back to its home position. >> That's nice. >> Yeah, so what we have on screen here >> Is the 3D shape of what the scanner could see at that position. So like I was saying you don't get anything underneath. And so we're actually getting a little bit of the table. So these are all the bolt holes. And so what I would do at this point is just kind of orient it so that I can see it sitting on the table. Just take a tool here that will allow me to clip out things that I don't need, and I can just grab all the background stuff like this and just delete that. Rotate around, and just continue deleting out the things that I don't need. Whoops. So I can just chop out all the unnecessary stuff and, End up with just a dinosaur standing there. And so then we would do this again at the various other angles until we had everything All the way around. >> And what's the green? >> Yeah the green is what, it's kind of the screen, the software's way of indicating there's nothing there on that side of the geometry. So the gray is what it acquired, the green is sort of a hole in the data sourcing, the backside of those front faces. As I rotate around them you can see. >> They got this part of the leg but not the inside on that. So that's why we tip it over. Scan the inside of his leg and then align that. It's the same thing here. You got the top of his horns but not the inner side. The top of his head not the underneath. >> So we need to flip them and do a second scan. >> So we would flip them over and do a second scan. Align those two together, and then do one final alignment and merge and we could have a concise data set. This software's only displaying a sort of a low resolution previsualization on the data, so when it's finished we get a very high resolution point at every quarter of a millimeter. >> Yeah is about half way done. >> About half way, yeah. >> Great, and Travis, finally so once we flip the dinosaur, scan the backside, what happens? How do we turn this into an actual 3D printed product? >> There really isn't a whole lot left to do. If we want to print that exactly the way it is, if you're okay with it being a flat color Then we align the next scan, the next set of scans to this one. Merge them together, and then output an STL mesh that would go into your 3D printing cell. >> So you can save this as an STL? >> Exactly, right out of the software. >> And I can save that on my SD card, pop into my Ultimaker, and. >> Yeah, exactly. >> And photocopy my >> Dinosaur. >> Toy dinosaur, yeah. >> Fabulous, thank you so much for having us. >> Yeah, thanks for coming. Thank you. [MUSIC]
