In this article, I’m taking a look at the new Turtle modular 3D scanner from 3DMakerPro.
I’ll show you exactly what it’s capable of, what it’s good at, where its limitations lie, and whether it’s worth considering.
But first, let’s see what a scanner like this can actually do in a real-world project.
I’ve wanted to convert my single-hose portable air conditioner into a dual-hose system for a while now . To do that, I needed to design an adapter that fits around the rear inlet vents.
This is a particularly complex shape with lots of organic curves, making it very difficult to measure accurately with a pair of calipers. That makes it an ideal project for a 3D scanner.
The Turtle uses blue structured light, so like an infrared 3D scanner, I didn’t need to cover the air conditioner in tracking markers. That saves time and makes the whole scanning process much easier.
It’s also a great use case for the Turtle because it can operate completely wirelessly using the 6.4” touch screen control pad. Trying to scan something this size while tethered to a PC would have been much more awkward.
The Turtle is available with three interchangeable, hot-swappable camera modules that snap on magnetically. Which one you choose depends on the size of the object you’re scanning and the level of detail you need. For this project, the Medium module is the obvious choice. I only need the overall shape to design the adapter, and since I’ll be reducing the mesh complexity in Fusion anyway, there’s no benefit in capturing unnecessary detail. The larger field of view also makes tracking easier and speeds up the scan.
Tap New Scan, move the scanner back and forth until it picks up the object, then move around slowly keeping an eye on the distance graph, effectively painting it with light.
If I were using a laser scanner for this, I’d first have to cover the back of the air conditioner with reflective markers so the scanner could track its position. That adds an extra setup step before you can even start scanning. Here, I could simply start scanning straight away.
I scanned around the vents in just a few minutes. Although it’s tempting to scan the whole air conditioner, that would only create a much larger mesh and slow down the CAD work later. I only need enough data to model the adapter accurately.
Once you’ve captured what you need, tap Pause, then the tick icon to start processing the scan. You can manually choose the point spacing or simply accept the suggested setting before tapping Confirm.
The control pad is effectively a compact computer, powered by an octa-core processor with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. After processing, you can inspect the point cloud to make sure everything has been captured correctly.
Once you’re happy, tap One-Click Processing. In this case, I’m using the Medium quality setting before clicking Apply.
This generates the final mesh right on the control pad, which we can now export to the computer either wirelessly or using a USB drive. I find the wireless transfer more convenient overall, and it’s fairly quick if you have a reasonably good 5GHz Wi-Fi network. I also found that sometimes my USB drive wasn’t recognised.
On your PC or Mac, open 3DMakerPro’s JMStudio and choose Import from Device. Take a note of your computer’s IP address displayed in the connection screen, enter it on the control pad and tap OK. Once the files have been transferred across, you can bring them into the JMStudio workspace and either continue working on them or export them for processing in your CAD software. I’m exporting the scan as an STL file to bring into Fusion.
There are several ways you could model something like this, but after a bit of experimentation, this is the workflow I settled on.
In Fusion, I reduced the complexity of the mesh using Mesh > Reduce, then created Mesh Section Sketches to outline the shape of the curved back of the portable air conditioner. I then used the Fit Curves to Mesh Section sketch command to create curves that I could use to loft a surface matching the rear panel around the inlet vents. I added a 6-inch circle offset from this surface for the ducting adapter and lofted between the two. I then extended the lip of the adapter through the mesh body before converting the mesh into a solid body and using Boolean operations to trim everything flush with the back.
The adapter was too big for my Bambu X2D, but it just fit on my Creality K1 Max. Just under 12 hours later, I had a print that fitted the back of the air conditioner like a glove. I used some 3M foam tape to attach it, which worked surprisingly well. I’d originally intended to extend the adapter with a few fixing lugs so it could be attached using the conveniently positioned screws around the back of the unit, but the tape worked so well that I simply added some aluminium foil tape around the edges to improve the seal further.
I might do a follow-up Short to see what difference the dual-hose conversion actually made, so let me know in the YouTube comments below the accompanying video if that’s something you’d like to see.
That gave me exactly the scan I needed, but one of the Turtle’s biggest selling points is its modular design. The table above shows what each module is designed for, so let’s see them in action.
Starting with the Small module, I scanned the Creality Owl, which is a fairly easy scan and a good test of resolution. I scanned the owl at Fine quality, first upright and then upside down. After each scan, you can remove any unwanted parts of the scan using the selection tools and dragging your finger across the screen. It’s easier to do this on a computer with a mouse, but it’s still perfectly possible on the control pad. You can then align the two scans. This worked fine in automatic mode, but there’s no manual mode on the control pad, so if it does fails you’ll need to do it in JMStudio. I cover this and more in my review of the Moose 3D, which I’ll link to on screen and down below.
After alignment, we can select the combined scan and use One-Click Processing, choosing the High quality setting. In my testing, I got better results using the One-Click Processing on the control pad and the generic, rather than advanced, settings in JMStudio. I got very noisy meshes when I adjusted the settings manually.
I scanned the owl using comparable settings with the Moose 3D and the Creality Otter in Small mode. The Otter scan has the highest resolution, with the Turtle close behind. The Moose is more comparable to the Turtle’s Medium module and has noticeably lower resolution in this test. I have got better results with manual settings with the Moose 3D, but I wanted to see how these scanners compare using simple out-of-the-box settings at their highest one-click quality.
Next, I tried scanning the cleat cover for my cycling shoe. I’ve lost the left one, so I was hoping to scan the right one and mirror it before 3D printing. It’s pretty worn out, so it has some very fine detail. I sprayed it with scanning spray to achieve the best results. Auto alignment worked with just a top and bottom scan, but I added a vertical alignment scan for a better result. Even with a fair bit of experimentation, though, it would need a lot of work to produce a decent 3D-printed replica.
You’ve already seen the Medium module in action and I scanned many other objects successfully, but this cordless drill lost tracking when using the control pad, despite adding some vertical decoys. And the Turtle is not great at reestablishing tracking when lost.
So I switched to a wired connection in JMStudio, attaching the Medium module to the battery base. You can purchase just a single camera module, and it’ll come with this battery base for a wired connection. The base provides power and has a USB-C port to connect to your computer. I prefer this to the Moose 3D, which has a rather awkward Y-cable connection for power and data.
I selected Geometry mode in JMStudio—you can’t currently choose between Geometry and Texture mode on the control pad—and again, using some vertical decoys to help with the tracking, I was able to get a decent scan. Even on my desktop PC with 64 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i9 processor and an NVidia RTX 5070 Ti, I never saw the frame rate exceed around 12 fps, which was similar to what I saw on the control pad. 3DMakerPro quotes 10–30 fps, so I’m not sure under what conditions the higher frame rates are achieved.
The reflective parts of the drill would ideally need some scanning spray, and I’d also need a second scan with the drill upside down to produce a complete model.
But even so, I had enough information to do a quick accuracy check. JMStudio lets you take measurements directly from the mesh, and comparing one of the features around the base of the chuck, I measured 47.6 mm, compared with 48.2 mm using my calipers. I would have hoped for slightly better accuracy.
Finally, I tried scanning my bicycle frame attached to my turbo. These curves, again, would be very difficult to measure if, say, you wanted to design some frame bag accessory, for example. I started off with the Medium module, but you can see the usefulness of having the various modules—the Medium module doesn’t have enough field of view to capture the frame, but it would be useful for the handlebars.
Switching to the Large module, it tracked the frame fairly easily, and even a quick scan would give me the geometry I needed. One thing to note – you can’t switch modules mid-scan which would have been very useful.
Conclusions
I do like the concept of the Turtle. You can start off with just the Medium camera module, which is very reasonably priced especially with its launch discount, and then add the other modules as and when you need them.
But it’s the control pad that really makes it interesting. It does bump the price up quite significantly, but being able to scan completely wirelessly makes the whole experience much more convenient, with no cable getting in the way. I also found the control pad software more intuitive than JMStudio, so I found myself using it for most of my scanning. It’s effectively a mini computer, so if you don’t already have a computer capable of running JMStudio, that may also help justify the extra cost.
JMStudio itself is okay, but it hasn’t changed much since I tested it a year or two ago. It still doesn’t use GPU acceleration, and texture mapping takes so long that I only used it once for this review. It does have a couple of useful features,such as the three-point alignment and the measuring tools, but overall I find CrealityScan more user-friendly and more capable, and Creality constantly updates it with improvements and new features.
The control pad is currently missing manual alignment and a few other features, but being able to pick it up and start scanning within a minute or two meant I used it far more than any other scanner I’ve owned, especially since, with blue structured light, you don’t need to apply markers.
Most of the objects I scanned tracked pretty well, but you’ll still need some scanning spray and some 3D-printed decoys—or something similar. Egg boxes work very well too!
A couple of minor points: there’s no protective cover included for the camera modules, and when a module is attached to the control pad, it feels a little top-heavy, making it seem quite easy to damage. My package also didn’t include a lanyard. I pinched one from the Moose 3D, but the lanyard attachment is on the wrong side if you’re right-handed.
If you’re using it with the control pad, there’s no tripod mount, so I found myself curling my fingers underneath the protruding lens. This works okay, but it’s not ideal, and it does get fairly heavy if you’re holding it for long periods.
You can also use it another way, which I haven’t shown so far. You can attach the camera module to the battery base, mount that on a tripod using the built-in tripod mount, and then connect it to the control pad with a cable. However, I generally found that more awkward.
One other concern I have with both the control pad and the battery base is that the batteries aren’t user-replaceable. That’s particularly a concern with the control pad, considering how expensive it is. I hope 3DMakerPro will offer an affordable replacement scheme if the battery fails out of warranty. I also found the battery runs down fairly quickly if you do the processing on the control pad, so most of the time I just transferred my scans to my desktop for processing, which was also quicker.
Overall, there’s a lot to like about the Turtle. I love the modular design and being able to use it completely standalone with the control pad. At this price, though, I would have liked to see laser scanning alongside the markerless structured-light scanning, especially given that scanners like the Creality Pika include it at a lower price point.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and again please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
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3DMakerPro Turtle
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