Wow, thanks for taking the time to put all that info down for us. I think I understood it
but I have a million more. You certainly helped me focus.
When I posted the Q, I was confused as to which imaging technology was the best or which was old technology or where it was going. And you did touch on this a little. There are so many different technologies around though. Eg White light? Blue LED? Red laser? Strip lighting? Or even Phase Shifting Optical Triangulation!? I'm sure there's others. Also number of cameras. How important is this? When we talk cameras what MPix do we need? I'm looking for metal frameworks, but the ability to do bars would be a nice to have. How good are the sensors on these cameras? On a practical level; to what detail do I realistically need for the Jobs i described above?
I appreciate you advice on file formats too. What's open and closed formats. Ive heard the terms, but didn't understand them. 3mf seems the future, but all the manufacturers talk about stl. I'm wary of the closed source SW, thanks for highlighting them, as I hope not to be locked into a particular printer/miller service. Licences are also a down for me. If I spend all this money I do not want them dictating time/scan limitations on me.
Are these the only areas I should be looking into? Are there questions/areas I haven't asked about that I should know when making comparisons.
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what you are asking seems more of a question of what company has the scanner that beats them all - which is a fallacy in itself. there really isn't one that is best. there are advantages and disadvantages to everything.
advantages of white light - speed. advantages of red laser - cost
you need a scanner that fits your budget, so table that as priority criterion 1.
from there determining what will work for you is a matter of understanding the scanner technology, and its various limitations. red laser and blue light scanners need powder application when scanning any sort of metal, or translucent object. so if you are scanning a ti abutment, spray will be required. scanning a tissue replica for producing a ti abutment, also needs spray.
white light mostly doesnt need that. but scan spray will help reduce noise in the scan, irrespective of the technology at play.
whatever your needs are for designing it doesnt make a whole lot of difference what scanner you use to get there. what works for zirconia, works for metal, temps, and tons of others. what does impact your ability to work on various materials is the opennness of the scanner, cad and cam. an all-in-one scanner such as the Nobel g2, or DentalWings, really hampers your ability to work with multple partners. Nobel and DW are examples of partly open scanners. while they don't always scan in a proprietary format, they can be locked into a manufacturer-specific format that (it is assumed) nobody else can work with.
what you seem to be looking for is a scanner, cad, and cam that use no proprietary format but can work together and each unit within this system be completely replaceable or upgradeable.
you are in luck, as there are two ways to approach this.
1, look at getting all open technology. so a Medit scanner or example, while it comes with its own software its optional. adding to it an open design suite like Exocad (whereinwhich you can purchase a scan module to overwrite the Medit software if you so choose). and adding to that the open CAM and milling/printing machine more or less will dictate this. Medit and Exocad are a combination that is highly flexible, great accuracy, great dependability, and most people that offer it can offer good deals. Exocad is extremely popular for this reason.
2, you look to a single company for your whole kit. lets get down to brass tacks, i'm advocating for only one company here, 3shape. yes, they are expensive. yes, they are worth it (mostly)(usually)(kinda)(well i think so anyway)
lets face the nuts and bolts here, in the past you would really need to consider the pros and cons to get good quality stuff out of your scanner cad and cam. because scanners were only good to 100um, and milling machines could only produce quality at speed down to 50um. over time this has greatly increased - now most scanners are 8-15um, and most mills are capable of single digit microns precision (even if that's a misnomer all by itself).
the worst bar you can make today will be plus-minus less than 50um over an arch, or less than 10um in any single area.
you almost can't screw this up. does that mean you should look at the cheapest options only? absolutely not. just realize that the difference between a 10,000$ scanner and a 30,000$ scanner is about 20um accuracy. the difference between a 50k$ milling machine and a 150k$ machine is not so easily defined.
I won't be using a 3D printer with my system so maybe I don't have to concern myself with this format. Thanks.
