Anyone here used DAVID-Laserscanner

[Cab]

I bought DAVID a few years back to scan violins, cellos and whatever else I might need in my shop. I don't think you'll get very satisfactory results trying to scan the engine mount you have there for the following reasons:

1. The DAVID scans give you a mesh with a lot of points that you then have to edit into something useful, most likely with Meshlab (open source) which is pretty maddening in my experience. It's not impossible, but it's not fun!

2. DAVID is not very good at undercuts. You'll probably have to fill in some areas by hand which is very painful, especially if you want any kind of accuracy.

3.The surface you get is usually very bumpy, especially if you use a laser and not a projector for the scan line. You also may need to color your object to be scanned white, as in paint it, to improve the scan quality.

4. You'll most likely have to scan your object from more than one side and then join the scans by hand, again not fun.


That said, I have used DAVID to reproduce violin tops and backs and also to make a patch for the inside of a cello top where the sound post had worn it out. They were all reasonably successful but it was quite a bit of work to get the scans to the point where they could be used. If I were going to make the piece you have there I would either make a measured 3D drawing in Rhino or another CAD program, or take a mold from the original part and cast it. Casting isn't as hard as it looks and there are a lot of websites where you can find out how to do it. Here are two for starts:

melting metal in a home foundry, backyard metalcasting, metal casting

Casting Aluminum

I love the second site: "DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional! If you do this you will likely die, so click here now: www.disneyland.com"


The following pictures show the scanning setup I built, including a motor drive for the laser, and a test cut I did of a patch for the inside of a violin top prior to doing the cello top patch. As you can see, the accuracy is only about 1 mm or so.