I wanted to try scanning in some objects using a series of pictures. After playing around I soon found it works much better if you carefully control the angle of each shot. To that end I printed up a quick and dirty turntable. It has 50 stops per rotation (lining up with the 50 picture limit on some programs). I included a couple of scanned objects as examples.

Prusa

Prusa Clone

No

No

I used 0.2 with a 0.3mm nozzle

N/A

I hot-glued the base to a piece of plywood and the wheel to a piece of foamboard. Lay the wheel on top and make sure to engage the ratchet. I had painted the top white, but later found out it should actually have a good pattern to it so the software can triangulate on it better.

Place the object to be scanned in the center of the turntable and position your camera on a tripod pointed down at about 30 degrees. Snap a picture and advance the turntable 1 notch until you get a full 360 degree view.rnrnI first tried the open source Regard3D (http://www.regard3d.org/index.php). While this did work, it had many false starts and a lot of post editing to clean things up.rnrnI then tried 3DF Zephyr (30-day trial) which worked much better. It identified the object on the first try and needed only about 10 minutes of cleanup.rnrnFinally I tried Recap-Photo. This was by far the best. Upload your photos, drink a beer and download an almost perfect model.Videos made from the scanned in 3D Models are here: https://youtu.be/ls2AXYDMsus and here: https://youtu.be/kqfiz2cBTBMrnrnRecap is an expensive program, but if you enjoy 3D printing and problem solving, I would highly encourage you to check out the FIRST Robotics organization (https://www.firstinspires.org/), find a local school or team in need of mentors and help them out. Along the way you can pick up a free educational account from AutoDesk that includes all their software packages.