In preparing for our search and rescue 3D printing design contest with DJI, we wanted to remove every possible roadblock for designers to help save lives. We decided to scan the new DJI Phantom 4 and make it available for download so you don’t have to own one to participate in making your ideas a reality.
One of the biggest challenges to designing functional parts–like search and rescue modifications for the Phantom 4–is making sure everything is measured correctly. Measuring by hand with calipers and a ruler can be time consuming, and if the object has complex curves it can further complicate things. 3D scanning helps reduce these limitations.
By scanning the object you get an accurate representation of the part and can import it directly into your 3D program of choice as a base template. And as we’re doing here, the scan can also be widely distributed via the web, enabling people all over the world to work on something without needing the physical object itself.
To see how the 3D scan was made using a Faro machine, check out the video below.
Learn more about our search and rescue design contest.
Download the 3D scanned template for the Phantom 4 here.
Nice Scan, but it would be nice to have the actual solid model CAD file for this. Can DJI provide their CAD data for this? I oriented the scan to the origin and found some inconsistencies in addition to the obvious scan artifacts. Some people will be able to work from the scan you made, but others may not depending on the design they’re trying to implement. If the CAD data was provided, along with a polygonal model derived from such, everyone would be able to work with the data and not have issues with proper retrofitting.
I appreciate the effort though Andrew! Good thinking to use the university’s RARO scanner! I’ll bet if you had time you could make an absolutely perfect scan with that. If the original CAD data cannot be obtained from DJI for whatever reason and Shapeways ends up extending the contest entry deadline date and you have time to make more perfect scans I can convert the scan data to a solid model. No charge. I can almost do it with the scan data you provided, but there are issues with symmetry and the angle of the motors and what not that I would need confirmation of before I could proceed. Confirmation such as, what are the actual bounding box dimensions in real life and each of the motors are skewed in different directions so I cannot tell what angle, if any, they are supposed to have. If you were to take the drone to just about any machine shop they would have the equipment necessary to get those answers for little or no charge.
Some constructive feedback if you don’t mind.
Actual surfaces or solids would have been much more useful
Properly aligning the planes and origins to the center of the model would have been nice
Could probably optimize/lower the poly count significantly
Thanks!
General comments:
I guess bringing in an stl file will kinda work. I design on Solidworks
I used to operate the latest FARO scanner (blue laser) at work. The previous red laser didn’t like shiny surfaces so I’d paint them flat white. But not really a problem for the blue laser.
You can mess with the .stl file in Meshmixer