The affordable and easy to use Matter and Form 3D Scanner recently shipped out its first wave of scanners to early Indiegogo backers after officially debuting the new product at London’s 3D Printshow.
When they launched their Indiegogo campaign in 2013 the start-up was hoping to raise about $81,000 but ended up pulling in close to $500,000. When the founders of Matter and Form, Drew Cox and Adam Brandejs – who has since left the company – came up with the idea for their product, they were just two designers who needed an affordable 3D scanner when one didn’t exist and decided to make it themselves. Clearly they had come up with a product for a market waiting to be served, since the buzz about the company has been building ever since.
After a well-publicized delay in their first ship date due to the larger than expected demand, the start-up has finally shipped out the first scanners a few weeks ago and so far the response from buyers has been overwhelmingly positive. Recently a video game developer working on a project with Oculus Rift, named Drew Medina, posted images showing him using the Matter and Form to scan rocks and chunks of lava for use in the environments of Headtrip Games new sci-fi VR game iO Moon.
While the Matter and Form scanner was originally envisioned as a tool for designers, the success was driven partially by a quickly growing install base of 3D printers. The Matter and From crowdfunding campaign saw backers as diverse as fellow inventors and engineers, gamers, 3D printing hobbyists, educators and aspiring at-home makers.
At only $579, the Matter and Form scanner is one of the more affordable home turntable 3D laser scanners. But don’t let that affordability fool you, it’s a pretty powerful little machine that can capture details as small as 0.43mm and has a capture size of 0.25mm. It was designed to be simple to use, lightweight, portable and Matter and Form claim that it can even export files ready to be 3D printed on practically any 3D printer. It has adjustable detail levels, so you can completely capture a smaller object on the lowest resolution setting in as little as seven minutes, with larger items being scanned at the highest resolution coming in at about 45 minutes.
Here is a video explaining how the Matter and Form 3D scanner works:
“3D scanning opens up whole new worlds – but only if people can afford to buy a 3D scanner,” said Matter and Form CEO Drew Cox. “We created the Matter and Form 3D scanner to make the technology available to everyone.”
Since the success of the Indiegogo campaign, Matter and Form has continued to grow, and recently secured a major investment of $2 million for staffing and to handle the success of the launch as well as investing in more marketing, product research and development. They have also announced their Approved Reseller program, starting with non-exclusive deals with Dynamism US and Dynamism UK.
