In the spirit of the web­site Hack-a-day, we’ve put a few things together to show you how you can get started with CNC Scan­ner on the cheap. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Share­ware ver­sion of Tor­mach CNC Scan­CAD™. Down­load it here

2. A cheap USB Micro­scope or web­cam. Like any of these ones on Ama­zon. Or play the auc­tion game on Ebay and try to get one even cheaper.

3. The CNC Scan­ner Quick Start Guide.

Our friend Movie Matt from Pic­Sound also helped me put together a small intro video on how it works if you’re more of a visual per­son. The pro­duc­tion value is a big improve­ment over my Handy­CAM movies. Unfor­tu­nately, Robert De Niro called in sick at the last minute, and I had to fill in for the on-screen tal­ent. Be kind, please

We think this is a pretty cool tool and have been able to use it around the shop to make all sorts of dif­fi­cult mea­sure­ments. Any USB cam­era can be made to inter­face with the Scan­CAD soft­ware, but choos­ing a high res­o­lu­tion scope with good qual­ity optics can really make this a pow­er­ful device. We really like the ones we picked out for the CNC Scan­ner pack­ages and would encour­age you use some­thing with sim­i­lar specs if you plan to use this as an engi­neer­ing tool.

Please feel free to give it a try. You won’t be able to save draw­ings with the share­ware, but you can still make mea­sure­ments. The full ver­sion requires a hard­ware key and will let you save and export files as dxf. If you do give it a shot, let me know what you think at info@tormach.com