Laser mod

I, like many of us, picked up a 3d scanner a while back and after many attempts to get things to scan started scouring the internet for ways to get more from my scanner. The review for that will come in the future as I am still testing mine. One of the things I noticed while treading the vast wilderness that is Google search is that Google hates me. I’m joking please don’t flag my ip google. What I noticed was that higher end scanners that have lasers as their surface detection system all have green lasers. So I ordered a pair and when they arrived I found they were much better than the red lasers that came in the kit. I want to say that the kit is great for what you get but a little money and some mods could make them so much better.

Why green Line lasers?

So after more google Foo, it seems that there are a couple Reasons why this is a better match. Most of us use Logitech scanners. According to people that are smarter than I, Logitech’s Camera’s see at 532nm better than the rest of the spectrum (all links below). I’ll let you read the forum posts on this for more info. The idea makes sense though when you back that with the fact that any high-end camera based scanner that uses lasers seems to have green as it’s preferred laser.

Voltage issues

The next problem and where I am currently stuck at is the voltage. My driver board doesn’t put out 3 volts. I’m not sure if this can be rectified through the Arduino or the driver board. I’m good at finding hardware fixes, though. So I ordered a pair of dc to dc voltage converters. If any of my readers know if there is a way to boost the voltage please let me know but for now, I’m waiting on my converters. They aren’t that expensive and if I don’t end up needing them here I’ll use them in something else.

My test Rig

Given that I don’t have working scanner images yet we will leave this as a To be continued. When I get this up and running I will update this post and time stamp the update. The power source here is one of those phone booster packs  You wouldn’t believe how hackable these things are. Pull the case off and you have a battery pack for a wide verity of projects and it already has battery protection and charging protection. If you keep all the ports your project can still charge a phone as well. I usually wait till these go on sale and buy a bunch. This is still all a work in progress but I’m expecting this to make a vast improvement on my scanner. Let me know if you decided to try it yourself or know if you know of any other great mods to these scanners.

Sources

DAVID-Laserscanner Forum

http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1631

http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1337

All links to stuff I own are amazon affiliate.

Line lasers  http://amzn.to/2mFruea

Power converter  http://amzn.to/2m6qYZY

Battery Pack http://amzn.to/2mFARul