There were a lot of 3D scanners on the show floor at Euromold. Most of them were photogrammetric booths that are difficult to move around, while the B2C body scanning market is currently dominated by the handheld, structured light, EVA 3D scanner by Artec. Now, a new compaany based in Russia and Latvia, Thor3D, is challenging this dominance with a new system that offers several advantages over the competition, as well as a powerful and free stitching software to go with it.
Even though it appears considerably larger, Thor is relatively lightweight, coming in at only 1.8 Kg. One advantage is it doesn’t need any wires at all, which means that feet don’t get tangled up in the cables while circling around the person to be scanned. Thor also has a built-in touch screen, with three easy to use controls for beginning and ending the scanning procedure, or erasing the scanned object.
Accuracy currently stands at 0.2mm (200 micron). While, these specifications are more than sufficient for human body 3D scanning, and are similar to other scanners on the market, Thor also introduces a large field of view (FOV), twice as large as anything currently on the market, which means that the 3D scanning can be carried out in about half the time. Even so, the colored texture acquisition is remarkably accurate.
Once the scanning is done, you can just take out the USB flash drive from the scanner and transfer the 3D scans to a computer. While Thor’s creators don’t emphasize it, what seemed most impressive to me, when I had my 3D scan performed during my visit at Euromold, is that the software carried out the entire cleaning and stitching procedure independently. It only took about 2-3 minutes and my 3D model was prepared, sealed for watertightness and readied for printing.
This utility only has three buttons: import, go, and export. And, although there are other options for advanced users (settings, cut, smooth, etc), you don’t need to use any of them. This is 3D scanning made real easy.
