Homemade laser scanner software

[plexer]

You may find that your cheaper laser pointer gets dimmer or evn goes completely with your rectifier setup they will only tolerate a very small set of voltage/current setups which the button cells they come with provide.

Ben

[belli]

Hi Plexer,

I am using a 9V battery to suply the laser through a 78L05 voltage regulator, I thought about putting a diode on the output to drop it to 4.3V but felt that it wasn't necessary as all the laser diodes I have seen advertised are rated at 5V anyhow.

Greg

[plexer]

Hi Greg,

I thought exactly the same thing when I wanted to modify a laser pointer for another use and this is the same setup I used, found after a while it got dimmer and then died completely you may want to drop that voltage before yours does the same.

The cheapy ones in pointers really are no good for customising you can buy a proper laser diode that designed to be used in different situations from most electronics places.

Ben

[WayneHill]

FYI: The object being scanned can be coated with a light powder (pun intended) so the laser beam is not reflected off any smooth surface.

[belli]

Hi all,

Just to clarify, the beta version is not limited to 12 segments and to get a good scan you really should go for at least 48. There is no limit on the number of segments that I am aware of.
Greg

[zoltan]

Hi,

Please, tell me how I can buy this software? What do you think, a laser head from a laser printer ( the optical system seems to generate a line - not check yet!) is not better than a pointer and any line converter to get the line? Could someone tell me what is the common power a laser head from a printer?

Thank you.

Zoltan

[mikie]

This is great,

Just what i was looking for, a 3D scanner at just the right price.
Will have to try and become a beta tester.

/Mikie

[whiteriver]

For a cheap accurate table you might try Harbor Freight. They have a 4" table with a vernier on it. It would not be hard to hook a nema 23 stepper motor to it and control it with Mach2 or some other software. Then you can get precise segments. I have done up to 360 pictures on a object. Thats 1 degree per picture. Vertical segments are limited to the resolution of the picture. i.e. 1024x768 would be 768 vertical segments.
Bruce is working on a smoothing routine that will clean up the laser line in the photos. Will be nice to see how that works.
As for picking a laser in the store. Turn them on and shine them on a object from about 3 feet away. You want the brightest skinniest most complete one you can afford. No blobs or missing sections. The skinner the better. Since that determins you detail.

Donny

link for table.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=47052

[High Seas]

belli - thanks for the correction - don't know what I was thinking - there are some limits, "The demo version of Scan Z is limited to a resolution of 40." in this case the vertical resolution is limited to 40 polygons not segments. Where did I get 12? Doooh! My bad - thanks Jim
ps I proved also a 4 dollar laser will make images - just not worth posting! back to the store!

[joevennix]

Sorry to bring up an old post but...
the same "laser line" effect can be had by shining a laser through a clear piece of round acrylic.

[High Seas]

joevennix
Heyyy Joe, (a favorite song of mine...)

...the same "laser line" effect can be had by shining a laser through a clear piece of round acrylic.

Can you "paint me a better picture here?" Is the laser shined thru the edge of a round piece of acrylic? If so, thats way cool - Seems like you could control how sharp the "lines" are by the thickness of the acrylic, and how polished.
Or have I got that all wrong? Seems like with this approach a laser pointer could be a cheap mod for this software.
Thanks, and,
Jim

[Ed_R]

You can CERTAINLY color me STRONGLY INTERESTED.