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Review on πŸ’‘ Revolutionize Manufacturing with HE3D Systems Advanced Injection Plastics by Roy Boone

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Worthy implementation of a bad idea

I thought long and hard about how to judge that. There's the concept of an open source product/software corner and then a company that makes and sells the parts as they appear in that original open source specification. As for the quality of the product delivered, I have no serious complaints. Casting of decent quality, more than adequate for the task. Webcam - Logitech C270; the same that is specified in the open source design. It's not the best camera, but I can't complain that they stick to the open source specs. Some measurements on the bed seem a little off; I had to add some washers because the screws were sticking out too much. Not a big deal, but it tells me no one bothered to put one together to see if they matched. Line lasers are cheap junk. Original design as far as I can tell. One laser line is about twice as wide as the other and I had to use some RTV on the filaments to keep the lenses from rotating just from the vibration of the running machine. But I didn't expect quality lasers, so it's not. really a complaint. Assembly instructions were missing and assembly is not the same as the 3D printed version (as you can find online). Putting it together wasn't that bad. They used a fake Arduino that didn't work with the regular Arduino drivers. So now I've installed hacked Chinese drivers that I don't really like. The bed contains a bearing. This camp is pretty rough. I'm not sure if this affects the quality of the scan considering the relatively low resolution of the camera and the low quality line lasers. Also, this bearing is not sealed or set in a way that I would like to grease it. Luckily it doesn't spin fast. The calibration pattern was printed on a piece of paper and I believe they used "scale to fit" because the squares were the wrong size. I had to print my own, which got pretty good results, although the paper doesn't sit as perfectly flat as it should. While I know this will be an issue with a good camera and lasers, I'm not sure it matters for the components you get in this kit. Overall, ignoring the flaws in the open source design, they're pretty close. I had to add some details and glue to put it all together, I had to install some schematic drivers and I had to print out my calibration template. I'm deducting a star for those things. Then I moved on to the open source project itself. Scanning is not very good. Anything more than 45 degrees from the camera will not be scanned. The FAQ shows a scan of the bust with the parting. I don't know how they did it; I never get to the top of anything unless it gets to the bottom. I had to do multiple scans with objects in different orientations and then try to match those point clouds. It's not easy and it's not accurate. There are many things they could do to improve this. You can double the price when things are fixed, but the quality goes from marginally useless to actually useful. Or in other words, it would be $230 well spent, not $115 wasted. If I only reviewed the open source project I would think it would get 1 or 2 stars in the review. However, this review is for a ready to sell item based on the design, not the design itself. Basically I would tell you that you don't need the Ciclop template scanner at all because it's just bad design to begin with. There are other homemade/cheap 3D scanners that work best for a little more money and even if they don't you really have to struggle to get anything even remotely useful out of them. But if you insist on buying, then for the price this package is quite decent.

Pros
  • few competitors
Cons
  • unreliable