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Artec 3D launched its second hand-held scanner this month, after the Point, called the Artec Spider 2, which promises a full-color, high-detail experience for applications like complex reverse engineering or creating hyper-realistic CGI.

At about $30,000, the Spider 2 is marketed as a tool for museums, law enforcement, the automotive industry, healthcare, and engineering.

The Artec 3D Spider 3D scanner is faster and captures more detail than the previous version (Source: Artec 3D)

Space Spider vs. Spider 2

Luxembourg-based Artec 3D first launched the “Space Spider” way back in 2015 as an update to an older scanner called the Spider. The company says the Space Spider was originally developed for use on the International Space Station (ISS), hence the name.

One would think the Space Spider was way overdue for an update but it remains a popular choice for industrial 3D scanning despite its age. Yet, Artec 3D says the Spider 2 features “significant improvements,” including greater depth and field of view, capture speed, and resolution.

From Part to Model

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Artec Spider 2

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	Space Spider	Spider 2
Scan Detail Resolution	up to 0.05 mm	up to 0.05 mm
Scan Accuracy	up to 0.1 mm	up to 0.05 mm
Capture Speed	up to 7.5 fps	up to 30 fps
Data Acquisition speed	up to 1 million points per second	up to 8 million points per second
Working distance	0.2–0.3 m	0.19–0.3 m
Linear field of view H×W @ closest range	90 × 70 mm	128 × 104 mm
Linear field of view H×W @ furthest range	180 × 140 mm	171 × 152 mm
Texture / Color Resolution:	1.3 MP / 24 bpp	5 MP / 24 bpp
3D mesh export formats	OBJ, PLY, WRL, STL, AOP, ASC, PTX, E57, XYZRGB, BTX, PTX,CSV, DXF, XML	OBJ, PLY, WRL, STL, AOP, ASC, Disney PTX (PTEX), E57, XYZ RGB

The Spider 2 is a still a laser-triangulation 3D scanner using blue-light lasers featuring full-color capture. The upgraded technology is apparent in the improved scan accuracy, a capture speed four time faster for an overall data acquisition speed of 8 million points per second. (Capture speed focuses on how fast the scanner takes images or scans while data acquisition speed considers the overall rate at which the scanner collects, processes, and stores data during scanning.)

There’s also a significant bump in texture resolution and the device’s volume capture zone (field of view for closeups) is twice the size of the previous version, so it can scan larger objects in fine detail with fewer passes.

It still looks a bit like an iron — its signature style — but is a touch heavier (950 grams vs. 800 grams).

Artec 3D says its new Spider 2 3D scanners excels at color and texture capture, like on this shoe scan (Source: Artec 3D)

A Spider 2 has target-free functionality, which is one of the features setting industrial 3D scanners apart from more budget scanners.

Target-free functionality means that the device has powerful enough and detailed enough scanning ability to not require that you place targets (small reference stickers) on an object before scanning. Instead, the scanner relies on natural features (such as texture, edges, or geometry of the object) to align and stitch multiple scans together. This enables quicker and simpler scanning workflows and is particularly useful for scanning large or complex objects where placing physical targets would be inconvenient or impractical.

Artec 3D says the Spider 2 is highly intuitive and straightforward to use with initial setup taking just seconds out of the box.