Jeff's Tool Shed

I’ve been messing around with the scanner that NextEngine sent me and, I have to admit, I’m getting frustrated. The demos I saw at SWW ‘06 & ‘07 made it all look so simple and yet I, a veritable genius, just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Ok, ok, so the genius thing might not be accurate, but I’m not dumb either. It seems to me that it should be a little more simple.
I’m trying to scan circuit boards. Reverse engineering them is a real PITA and using the scanner for this task was a no brainer. I’d be able to kill two birds with one stone. When Nick Borchers, an AE from NextEngine, was here he showed me a scan they’d done of a circuit board and it looked pretty damn good. I’ve probably tried at least a dozen different scans and they all come out looking lousy. Take this one, for example:

You can see that, although it says it’s aligned, it’s far from it. The funny thing is, when the alignment begins, the scan looks great. Once it’s done doing whatever magic it’s doing, it doesn’t look so good. What does this tell me? It tells me that I need to read the help files. It also tells me that I should contact Nick and get some more info. Why? Because I’ve seen what the NextEngine scanner can do and I’m willing to bet it’s operator error here. Nick explained to me that shiny surfaces need to be prepped before scanning. To do this, you can use the supplied powder brush. However, the recommended, albeit undocumented, method is to use Athlete’s foot spray (the powder kind). I’ve done that, but I’ve missed something else, of that I’m sure. The scanner is, from what I’ve seen and read, a good product. I need to do things right so that I can give it a fair shake. Circuit boards, with all their various geometries, aren’t the easiest things to scan.
As I was writing this, I rescanned the circuit board that I show. It now looks much better. Bear in mind that it has foot spray on it, which is why it looks cloudy:

As many of my loyal readers know, I’m not big on reading instructions.  I like to just get in there and do it. Well, I’m going to turn over a new leaf. That’s right, I’m going to read the instructions. I’ve been messing around with SolidCAM as well but, again, I need to read. Where vendors are starting to send me higher end, more advanced products, I feel it’s only right that I do things properly. So, stayed tuned folks. This blog is going to grow up…well, a little anyway.

Related Posts

• No Related Post