Scanything - cnc newbie setup - few troubles

Problems and questions
1

Hello, first post of this forum.

As per the title, I have a plasma table which is now running very smooth and after a few teething problems with scanything (camera orientation etc etc) it now calibrates without issue on the 1mm dot (printed on white paper from cad), camera is a supereyes B005 (0.01x - 200x magnification, ~30fps 640x480 (~0.3mp)) camera.

The problem is I’m trying to scan an aluminium casting, which is about 5" deep from the flanged face.

I’ve used a bit of spray can hairspray to blacken the flanged face, but I’ve been struggling to get scanything to follow a trace. I’ve fiddled with the brightness and smoothness settings, camera LED’s on / off / dimmed / full on, garage lighting (4x70W fluorescent), on off, strapped an LED lamp to the carriage to improve lighting, but it still looses the trace.

The casting is placed upon a stand below the x/y table (plasma slats removed), on a metal plate with white sheets of paper below it, can a white piece of paper is placed upon the flanged face and calibration is done.

Dot moved to the edge, and it finds the edge, “mask” view is inspected smoothing and brightness adjusted to find a representative (smooth edge similar to that being traced), press run and after a short while the trace fail’s, I’ve tried the setup on white, red, green and blue. And all seem to fail at some point, and looking at the mask window setting I’ve ended up with a load of islands or its followed a shadow because of the camera focal distance being not able to handle the 5"thick flange.

Suggestions?

Thought about painting (hairspray) the casting black and the flange white to see what happens (need to order some white hairspray first)?

Thought about a different camera that has a greater focal range… not sure where to start?

Any suggestions welcome, thanks very much

Rob

2

contrast is definitely your friend with this tool.
i have also found glossy finishes are not what you want, flat colors are best.
some parts are a little tougher than others to trace, but with enough tinkering it works.

3

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply (was thinking I was alone there for a minute with a few looking but no one saying anything over the setup (not sure how many others are using a similar camera or have other recommendations)

I’ve ordered a few things to see if I can alter the setup for the better. Such as white spray can of hair dye (the black I’ve got seems to dry to a nice matt finish), a boreoscope camera (same frame rate just bit further focal distance (give it a shot and see what happens), and a light ring because after having another go last night (hobby machine for me) think I’ve concluded that the lighting from the super eyes camera could be better and it was a recommendation in one of the other scanything posts on here

Hoping to do bellhousings etc so the abyss next to the flange face may be an issue but may be solved with some of the items above (paint flange white, abyss therefore darker to black, better lighting (no edge of view shadow) and maybe a camera with less magnification (trade off against accuracy))

Rob