Make replacement parts faster - with CAD or a 3D scan? 

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What I like to do is to make a photo of the part. Use that as a background in CAD and trace it. If you scale the picture in CAD you will have all the dimensions in one go.

That shot of you tossing that scanner into the trash, that's such a beautiful shot. Tells me all I need to know about that product.

The first lesson of this video is to avoid the proprietary licensing crap and use an open source 3D scanner. Great concept for a video, as always, flawlessly executed for maximum educational value. Thank you. We need resin printers without the toxic mess and the hassles of slopping chemicals, drying and post curing. This part would be very strong printed in ABS-like resin.

I prefer CAD over scanning every day. Unless you want to print an organic object like a plant, bone or ring. But beyond that, CAD! Especially because everything's parametric and you can adjust and sometimes even improve the original part.

I look forward to the day that consumer 3D scanners are affordable, reliable and work well. The world of home repair will never be the same. The effort of measuring and recreating parts is doable for some things, but if it could be automated.... that'd be awesome!

In CAD you can also modify some features in order to obtain a more printable piece

I prefer cad modeling, you can identify necessary features like you did in the video, and optimize for 3d printing. Scanning sometimes leaves weird areas that require supports or a lot of smoothing and loss of dimensional accuracy for smooth surfaces and small details.

A cheaper (and much less toxic) option than scan spray is dry shampoo, it gives the same light powder finish (and smells a bit flowery..) and is massively cheaper.

the superfastmatt shoutout was cool to see. two very different channels but I expect more overlap in viewers than people might initially think

Would be also nice to see how long it would take with some open-source photogrammetry solution and a phone camera.

Why is a flush box confidential?

How come you said that the scan was faster when the cad when the video shows the CAD being faster?

One thing I can recommend, idk if you have tried this. You can put the part (considering its not too big) stick it in a 2D scanner and scan it. You can add a ruler for scale, Inventor and solidworks allows you to import an image, which you can scale to your sketch plane. It works beautifully for parts that are small enough to fit in a 2D scannner.

Your toilet flush button is WAY different than mine.

These results are pretty much what I expected. You did address what I was thinking in your wrap-up too, that this flusher part is suited to CAD, but that something larger and more organic that's difficult to measure directly would be much better suited to scanning. The example of the wheel well and suspension hadn't even entered my mind, scanning a difficult-to-measure environment and then taking those measurements in software. Great use-case. Thanks for the video!

3:36 is as far as I made it before I realized I will never have to worry about buying one of those scanners.

It's always fascinating how different countries have different methods for achieving the same goal. I'm from the US and our toilets have the flush mechanism attached directly on the toilet bowl tank as a small lever although some have a push button on the tank cover. With that first scanner, if the company ever goes bye bye, you have a very expensive paperweight. And as you've experienced, when the activation server is having issues, you still have an expensive paperweight.

I found when measuring parts with digital calipers that the designers of the part in question will often use whole numbers in its mm dimensions, making it easier to recreate in your 3D editor, and it especially helps when trying to measure circular dimensions when you can't directly measure the radius or diameter, ie curved inner/outer edges of the part. I would hope there's software out there that can take a 3D scan and apply the same whole numbers usage thing to end up with an easily editable highly accurate CAD file.

Thank you sir for another excellent video. I still find it incredible that if I need a part for something, I can fire up cad (or Blender) and, using some calipers and notes, I can make my own parts faster, and cheaper, than ordering and waiting for them. Or I can make something entirely unique that I cannot find already made. Or make a part that is no longer manufactured (like a vintage or antique part). I had an old pickup in my 20s. Like many old pickups, the tailgate latch didn't work right because one of the retaining clips that held the latch rods in place on the handle had broken. I tried for months to find a replacement, even going to the dealer, and had no luck finding a part that would work (the parts guy at the dealer basically told me to pound sand because finding that part in inventory for a 20+ y/o vehicle was a waste of his time). Now, I could model that clip and print it for pennies (some places wanted $45 bucks for a little plastic clip a cm long), and then share it with other makers.

15:00 The crossover we didn't know we wanted

in CAD, you can take a photo, scale it and simply outline it, especially such simple details of the mechanism. at the same time, there is no unnecessary work with cropping scan defects.

A great example of a use case with a good comparison! Nicely done Thomas!

I loved your optimized part at the very end. I've got a scanner and calipers and agree that in a lot of ways caliper measurements are better than scans. Best if to combine both to compliment each other. Angles are easier with a scanner while hard points are easier with calipers. Every use case it unique though. Good video.

I've recently had to this exact same thing with something that broke. Did it in CAD and also did the whole tracing on paper for the angles. Seing your result gave me a lot of confidence that the part will probably be good, cheers.

Video drop from Thomas makes my weekend. Thank you for the information.

I've wondered the same thing. Thank you for going through this. My mesh and scanning skills are much lower than my CAD skills, and both much slower than yours, so I wondered if I was somehow missing out on not being able to scan better. So now I know "perhaps", but not so much that it's important. I love the idea of using scan to feed CAD, and that's what I've gradually tried to do.

For altering the scanned part I found that 3d Builder works great for simple stuff, kind of the ms paint for 3d models, doesn't have anything super fancy but what it can do it does well.

Excellent video! I really enjoyed watching the two modelling workflows. Cheers 👍😎🇦🇺

Nice video. What can help with the Calipers and CAD sometimes is to just take a photo as reference and drop that into your CAD tool as a background. Once you scale the picture with a measurement that is easy enough to make, it helps to have some reference to trace odd angles and curves with sketch lines.

Have no idea about 3D scants but in regards to CAD manually tracing a 2D scann (bitmap) and the addition of the calipers would help avoiding mistakes and make the process more pleasant, maybe even faster. Just import 2D scanned picture to CAD :) Cheers.

Great video. I’ve been doing this type of thing for a very long time and all methods in the video and discussion have a use and place. Unless you are using a metrology grade scanner (and trust the scanners discussed here do not touch them) they are best used as reference geometry and then just mode over them in CAD. They are best used for high complexity models (complex curvature, highly faceted, non-intuitive feature easy to capture in top/side view pics). It’s also good to remember that most consumer and prosumer scanners are terrible at capturing black and shiny surfaces… if the part has this, the prep time goes up related to this step (use talc or the such, plus cleanup after) but scan is way better. If the part has relatively simple features (lots of basic shapes and the like) calipers, micrometers, or just a ruler can work well and much faster. For mid-complexity (still pretty simple shapes but straightforward angles that may be difficult to measure, picture reference works well (others already mentioned the flat bed scanner trick if the part/features fit or you can stitch ). But again, all the methods have their use case. One good thing to do is to verify one with the other. Like take a scan and measure what you can with calipers or ensure you have a known reference item I your scan or pic to scale off of. Glad to see this info is getting out of just the more hardcore engineering circles:).

kudos for using the same color filament as the original

Great video. I agree with you on what 3d scanners are best used for. That's part of the reason that i still use an old Xbox 360 kinect as my scanner instead of upgrading to something more high definition.

I already did something along what you said at the end to fix a couple of stuffs at home. I used photogrammetry instead of a 3D scanner because I don't have one. As I can see photogrammetry does not not seem really worse than the scanner you used in terms of results. I mount the part I want to replicate on a support (3D printed) with known dimensions (so I can set the correct scale that photogrammety typically doesn't get) then I use the 3D model as a reference for CAD modeling.

Great video Thomas, love your contributions! Let me give you one, in most CAD you can put an image on the background and planes, what I do in reverse engineering a part is take a picture of each profile and put on each plane and use a sketch feature to size it so it is the right size. Once you do this you can cut your measurement time down greatly and get really accurate parts, last set of parts I did were correct on first printing, and they had some weird shapes.

I am bit confused. You said that the cad took 35minutes. And that the scan took 43minutes. Then you concluded that the scan is faster?

It'd be interesting to see 3D scanning & 3D printing used in a loop, like deepfrying a jpg. Starting with a low-poly model would probably serve as a good noise seed as the verts & edges will round over to various degrees, where a smooth model may bias noise around detail more than on surfaces

A nicely timed video, thank you. I was half considering a scanner. For now, I think I will stick with Vernier callipers, a micrometer and Sketchup.

Yes, I think the point is to take the scan into CAD to use as reference. That's what I do. I use photogrammetry, having the textures can help too.

Super cool, thank u ❤ I really wanted to see something like this!

It would be interesting to see a follow-up on how this part holds up. My only concern area would be the pin that extends out.

I enjoyed this video, thanks Tom When you learn to actually model your own parts the hobby becomes more fun and justifiable (to the other half at least) 😂

Excellent video - thank you!

100% agreed. I've got a creality scan lizard when it came out and had the same experience and conclusions you came to :) it's good for certain tasks, but most of the time it's just easier/faster to draw the part in CAD.

If it wasn’t for you i would of never gotten into 3d printing. Thank you for all you do 🙏

Great video as always 👍 Great subject to undertake. Grant, from 3D musketeers, says, that it is the 3D software that makes the biggest difference of the 3D scanners. Thanks for sharing your experience with All of us 👍😃

Can you please do a vid on filament drying as far as what to get and or how to make your own?

Nice approach for the video!

I always go for CAD. For some reason I always heavily struggle with editing meshes/objects, let alone cleaning up a messy 3D scan. With CAD you just design what you need while taking 3D printing limitations in mind at the same time.

Your on point in the end of the video. I use the scanner for getting references that are almost impossible to measure with the caliper, then reverse engineer or use for references only. Even on a very expensive scanner you still get a dumb solid and need to reverse engineer it to get a real cad model. Scanning and directly printing is more for the people doing figures and stuff.

Interestingly enough. The 3D Makerpro Lynx, seems to be a rebranded Creality CR-01 even down to the softwear. I've used the CR-01 for about a year now, it can get decent detail, especially with the turntable for smaller parts.

So ein Video hat mich schon immer interessiert. Super Arbeit

What I would often do is take a photo of the part with a ruler (from high enough above to minimize distortions) and import it into the CAD. I then measure the fine details and precise lengths with calipers where it matters and use the photo (properly scaled) for the overall shape. But I like the approach with extending the angles too! Still, the photo is a great way to quickly spot any potential mistakes (like the rubbing nub) right away, most of the time my parts work in their first revision 🙂 Also, CAD gives us a very easy way to strenghten the parts where the extra mass would not block proper operation. With 3D scanned mesh this is more tedious. I tend to do that a lot, especially to prevent the original failure mode.

That part, and how it functions is definitely a CAD and near enough is good enough kind of solution, it even luckily aligns with the strength needed being along the layers of 3d printing

That new Prusa feature where you tab the USB-stick to the printer and the parts appear on the build plate is really handy, if you have to do some last minute printing! 😂

I would say measurements are the way to go, since you can edit everything element of the part to make it work best with the manufacturing process you have. 3D scans are awesome tho.

Been getting some good scan results with a Creality CR-01 3d scanner of full size car parts and guitars and orthotic foot arch scans to make better fitting shoes or printable flipflops that wont damage the arch. Its not good for smaller objects but what a vast improvement over previous scanners. And theres a bunch of newer chipset version scanners making for some very useful reasons to have one or a few.

I spray in a container that seals wire spraying outside. I then use a water color bush with the over spray powder for any stubborn regions. I'll also usually just use the brush because it's cleaner and quicker for small parts.

Out of curiosity, what is so special about the flush box that makes it unsuitable for sharing? I cannot imagine there being anything personally identifiable

....most important though, you got it fixed! And spot on about why 3d printers and the stuff we have are so great to have these days, diy all the way!

Super cool video! I'm really looking forward to your next one. Thanks, Tom! I would really like to see some more voron videos. :)

I've used a polycam scan to capture the area where my cad designed part will go, so I can make sure my design will fit where it's supposed to go

Thanks Thom, nice video as always ❤ I had a 3D scan at work, we only used it a couple of times and then I gave it away. In our case, for machanical parts, it was always faster and more accurate to take measurments from the part we needed to copy. With the 3d scanner you have to master more softwares and techniques. It would take me 10-20 minutes for the scan and hours to clean it, correct it in Meshmixer wich I never use. As you said, I think the scanner is more suited for environnement references we have scanned whole buildings with industrial grade ones and that can be a game changer in some applications.

Interesting and useful video. Thanks.

sod using online/cloud and huge lockdowns, as you just showed I learned this the hardway never again.

Great side -to-side comparison of two different approaches to reproduce relatively simple part. An advantage of CAD is that you can sometimes improve the original part, like you did at the end of video. The producer of the toilet 🚽 flush designed this part purposely weak to snap, so that you need to buy another set...

Durring the resconstrctions, many times I had an idea, that normal paper office scanner could be also also helpful. It can create very precise 2D contour in orthographic projection that can be very quickly reconstructed as sketch. Unfortunatelly never had it at home to test it. Also in this case it could speed up the reconstruction.

My personal perference is these situations in to take a couple of photos and either scale as image in CAD and trace it (or create an svg to speed the trace a little) and then combine with measuring with calipers.

I am still a fan of doing it the CAD way. I find it really relaxing. Thanks for the demo of scanning software. Anyone have any bets on how many generations of scan/prints you could get before the object isn't recognizable anymore? 🍻

Thanks for showing up the online problems. This will always be a problem for me because a few years down the road it may fail completely. I think these companies have some good reasons for doing it this way but they’re not good for me. I’m sure that they’re aware that recent phones can scan with their fancy cameras and without all the online hassle. What advantage are they offering? My calliper and I do a lot of bonding but one area where I fail is in the compound curves. I can’t measure those well enough to print a conforming fit. Haven’t tried a scanner yet.

3D scanning is also awesome in areas where you can not simply measure. I needed the inside of an container with wild angles and curved planes. I didnt even get my tool inside to measure.

I just recently also compared EinScan HX to simply making my own modle. I tried a house key, a circuit card for my car fob, and a visor for a GPS screen. A scanner is neat, but it's not for duplicating objects and more of a fancy reference maker or for artistic use only. I much preferred calipers to capture all primary features and then taking pictures with rulers on the primary features to capture secondary and third features. Also, dont sleep on document scanners. Not only are they ridiculous, accurate, but they do export dimensions metadata that can be picked up by some CADs. I did the circuit card and key like this..

In fairness to the Lynx, it was advertised for larger objects. Although I've used mine fairly successfully for smaller parts after a bit of love and patience

Years ago you made a video about the Openscan. This would have been nearly perfect for your use.

For complex parts I use 3d scans to use as reference for drawing the CAD part.

I usually trace the part or redraw the part then put measurements like old school drafting then I take those measurements to the computer. To me it seems smoother that way you can figure out how you are going to actually start the CAD process.

Great video

@MadeWithLayers Thanks for the heads-up on Shining3D's misauthentication process Tom! I already have one large paperweight in the form of a NextEngine where the software stack toppled permanently. I enjoyed the sponsor spot knowing the 'window' is already imaginary!

I would have scanned it *on a flat bed scanner* (with a ruler for reference) and traced it out in F360. That would probably take under 20 min

Not gonna lie, I thought CAD would be a dominant runaway winner, but it's impressive that it was so close. I really enjoyed this video!

I tend to trace the part on a piece of paper and then scan that into a jpeg to import into fusion 360. And then trace, using calipers to help confirm scaling and any tricky parts

Great video as always, what material did you print with? Thanks for the excellent video.

Great video as always, clear, concise, nice flow. Thanks :) I feel like using boolean operations on the Scan model, is leveraging CAD to increase speed. Imagine a scanner that "knows" the difference between the part and the scanner bed. Currently, I think scans make sense for organic designs and CAD makes sense for mechanical designs. However, learning CAD is a major endeavor, at least few dozen hours to get efficient flow. One day, scanners will be incredibly efficient along with the software, I mean they have come a long way, but there is a LOT of optimization that can make them 10x faster than CAD modeling. Supporting those companies is what will get them there.

I use my digital caliper for parts. However had a delta wing project that required the model of the EPP foam wing that did not exist and the frame was 500mm so I found Polycam for iOS and Android did the job remarkably well compared to the $300+ 3d scanners.

A alternative way to get overall perimeter details is to take a picture of the part using a long focal length to eliminate DOF and then to scale the image to a known dimension. This workflow could result in a little faster reverse-enginering of the part.

I use regular flatbed scanner.add a coin for scale. then import that image into cad. Then i trace it. Works wonders for angles.

A very informative video, particularly the insights into the processes used. Speaking of scanners at a consumer, or hobby level, my first thought would be to use the camera of a smartphone. Capturing images on a grid, or next to a ruler could be used as a reference background in CAD to trace the outline and details. Using callipers where needed to constrain part dimensions. Some smartphones like Apple's iPhones have LiDAR integrated, so combined with an App could do a 3d scan. I'd would no not expect much reduction in time, or effort going this route, but with scanning there should be no intrusive software locks, or cloud-only constraints.

I used an IPhone to scan a part of an rc plane to then design a new canopy for it. The plane has quite irregular shape so getting the 3D scan as a model helped a lot.

Tom, send that first scanner to Marco Reps 😀We'll be delighted with the outcome..

Cool. I'll hit you up to 3d model something next time I need it.

I am surprised you didn't also use a background image in cad while doing your 3d modeling. As it might of helped you both get the scale right and avoid the error you had.

If we’re 3D printing the part because it broke, going the CAD way is an opportunity to improve it, strengthening where it broke-and optimizing it for printing as well.

Tom have you considered taking a picture from a top view angle then importing it into a CAD software and tracing it? Its the easiest thing to do. Iphones now have a leveling feature (taking pictures from a top view angle) when you activate the camera's gridline in settings.

The CAD advantage is clear. It also gives the user the ability to create parts rather than just replication of broken ones. I am struggling to learn how to model in CAD but I consider that a set of skills that unlocks the capabilities of 3d printing.

All of this is very good! if you were to do all of the scanning with a professional scanner like one from creaform, scanning would take like 2 minutes for everything.

Man, I absolutely love how you threw that scanner in the bin 😆 Did they get the message? Did you receive half a million emails from them in 5 minutes???

Very cool

I think that the results of scanning of very product/software dependent. I have tried a few different ones and found that Polycam works best for me. It is a different process than what is shown in the video but it works well for me. I also do use the take a photo and calibrate it to use as a background to draw over. That works well, but there can be an additional step of lens compensation. There are many ways to it it, but it is important to be aware of. If not parallax effects can happen and lines will not be straight.

One bonus of using CAD: you can improve the part easily to fix the weakness that broke it in the first place!