Live Scanning vs. Mechanical Scanning

Okay, so for the past week Shannon, Sam and I have been looking into what sort of equipment would be needed in order to scan an object and what kind of software would be needed to make the thing go just to get some sort of outcome. The idea would be using a 3-D scanner to scan a profile of an object and then to convert that profile into a wave that could be imported into a CAD application to create a virtual model while playing the sound that the 'profile wave' would create at the same time. Unfortunately this isn't a 'push one button' process so it takes time to set up, import and export to just extract a basic profile.

Lucky for us we were pointed into a slightly more suitable direction called 'Structured Light Scanning'. If you haven't heard of this term it's where cameras and a projector are set up in certain configuration that allows images to be captured and decoded into 3-D point cloud(converting image information into something digital that can be read in CAD application). A great example and precedent of this kind of 3-D scanning is Radiohead "House of Cards" video for more information follow the link http://www.instructables.com/id/Structured-Light-3D-Scanning/



However this process, even though it's amazing beyond compare, is a tad too complicated to create within the time period we have. This leads to the happy accident Jess and I had while searching for open source software that could do this.

Taking Ruth's elegant concept of the turntable and trumpet and Shannon's brilliant idea of picking up sound through the contact microphone, we came up with a mechanical concept that used a more reasonable and more aesthetically suitable way of making 3-D prints do what we want them to do through the Melody Bot.

The idea would be to have a turntable that held a maker bot print in someway. Then a turntable arm with a contact microphone attached, rather than a needle, would be used to bump or scrape against the maker bot print in a rhythmic way. This would create the sound directly from the print itself without having to scan it. The sound wave taken from this would be imported into the computer like a DJ would as if they were mixing on the spot to create a live scanning in take. The sound values would then be turned into a new maker bot print. What makes this more 'out there' is that hopefully there will be multiple arms that bump or scrape against the print that's being read.

Once that was rigged up the further pushed idea would be to set up multiple turntables with their own respectable arms reading other prints at the same time so that the DJ mixing the print sounds had multiple imports that could be used like creating a song with each print being read representing a respective band member. This would mean that one print would represent a rhythmic drum beat, one would be the acoustic strum of guitar etc. The final print at the end would be a 'song' compilation that re-represented the original prints used to make it through the sound they produced.