Hands-On with the Matter and Form Three 3D Scanner

Manufacturer: Matter and Form

Price as tested: $1,499

Link: matterandform.net

When you get your first 3D printer, typically these days there are some showcase examples that you can print on the device itself. After this (hopefully!) immediate taste of success, you start looking for more things to print, and learn to use a slicer to prepare them for production on your particular machine. After the excitement of printing others’ designs wears off, you naturally start thinking about how to produce your own unique designs. A lot of the time this means learning a CAD tool, but there is another option: 3D scanning. 3D scanners allow you to skip learning a complicated CAD package (in theory!) and just start creating carbon copies of objects around you. 

I was lucky enough to get my hands on the Matter and Form Three, their third-generation semi-pro scanner, and I’m completely blown away. It feels like a gift from the future.

I mounted the device to its included tripod, attached the turntable, then powered it on, and was greeted with a projected logo on the desk in front of me. Perhaps an obvious party trick given the built-in DLP (digital light processing) projector, but it was a classy start to an impressive experience. I went with the integrated Ethernet connection rather than faffing about with Wi-Fi, and pointed my browser at matterandform.local, whereupon I was greeted with an intuitive web-based interface. After walking through the calibration process using the included card and stand, I was ready for my first 3D scan.

I looked around my desk for something reasonably complex, and settled upon a Lego minifigure wearing a baseball cap. The detail of the hands and legs, as well as the overhanging hat, seemed like a worthy challenge (plus it would be quick to print, assuming the scan went well).

The Three is unique in that it’s completely self-contained — all you need to use it is a web browser. The onboard quad-core 64-bit CPU, with 4GB of RAM and an integrated GPU, does all the number-crunching while its built-in 16GB of storage provides ample space for your projects.

Unlike MAF’s prior laser-based V2, the Three uses stereo Sony 13-megapixel cameras to capture objects in full color. Although tracking dots are not required, I did use some Aesub orange scanning spray to eliminate glare I was experiencing with the minifig’s head — I probably could have fixed it with some lighting adjustments, but I’d recently been given a few cans at Rapid+TCT Detroit, so was anxious to try it out. The software guides you through the many and varied settings, and my first scan came out well, but I was certain the unit was capable of more. I reached out to Trevor Townsend, MAF co-founder, for an express tutorial on dialing in the settings.

With Trevor’s help, I was able to get such incredible results that even the face on the minifig was present in my scan, and I learned how to combine multiple scans, using an insanely intuitive point-alignment system, in order to combat occlusions — like that hat brim that I had intentionally introduced as a challenge. Shown here are the results of only an hour or so spent with the machine, which I found astonishing.

After exporting an STL file for slicing, I had a perfectly precise (though of course not articulated) minifig dupe hot and ready on the bed of my Elegoo Centauri Carbon mere minutes later. I’d love to write more, but now I’m completely obsessed with finding more things to scan and print!

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This article appeared in Make:Volume 96. Subscribe to Make: for the latest articles.