3D Scanning a Foam Carved Volute with iReal 2E

Aug 23, 2022

For the iReal 2E color 3D scanner, to obtain the complete 3D data of this CNC foam carved volute, there are two plans to consider: If you don’t have a high requirement for the accuracy, you can use the feature alignment mode to 3D scan without sticking markers; if you want a high-precision 3D model, you can use the marker alignment mode, which requires sticking markers on the scanned object.

In this test, the most important thing is to obtain the shape and appearance of the volute, so the ability to restore the volute in the 1:1 ratio is not a must. Instead of sticking marker points to increase the accuracy, we adopted the feature alignment mode of iReal 2E, which doesn’t require sticking markers and can capture the color 3D data of the volute.

There is a function called “Model Aligning” which can register two sides of the volute through three common points on the two-point cloud files. The engineer used this function when scanning the volute, it helped with capturing more complete 3D data.

Model AligningModel Aligning

The results can be seen in the following pictures.

3D scan data of the volute

3D scan data of the volute

3D scan data of the volute3D scan data of the volute

From the complete 3D data, we can see the shape of the volute is well restored. The 3D scan data can be used in further reverse design, for example, the manufacturer can create a replica based on the 3D data. For the purpose of reverse engineering, iReal 2E is capable of 3D scanning objects larger than 30 cm, which can largely increase the work efficiency and data accuracy compared to the traditional ways.