Who Wants a 3D Scanner, Anyway?

splineboy asks: "In June 2002 a sun-starved computer engineer walked into a small room armed with an old PC, a 20 year-old video camera, some lasers, glass rods and an awful lot of duct tape. His mission was to create a program capable of converting a real world object into a computer model that could be manipulated, stored and eventually reproduced using stereolithography. After several hours of gluing, taping and generally walloping things with a hammer, Project Splinescan was born. Originally running on a batterd old machine (AMD-500), the prototype scanner proved the concept of low cost 3D scanning with a few rough scans. Now that a stable, multi-platform 3D scanning solution is on the horizon (even high school kids are building their own) - a question rings clear through the ether: 'OK, you proved you can make it work, but what's it good for?'" "What are the potential uses of a portable, low cost 3D scanner? Medical? Animation? Special Effects? Archeology? Ceramics? Lego Modelling? I've got my ideas about why 3D scanning seems to be getting so popular, but how would you like to see these projects developed in the future?"

Comments

Why?

[FunkyRat]

Custom tailored clothes ordered online.

Combined with some NCR cutting equipment the cost could be brought down quite low.

art

[Jafafa Hots]

whenever I see this sort of thing, or rapid prototyping machines, all I can think of is that I'd like to get my hands on it for making sculpture.

I'm not even sure how I would USE it to sculpt, what kind of work I would do... I just know I'd find some way.

Orthodonture

[Jherico]

I worked at a company where 3D imaging of plaster models of teeth was a critical component to the business model. Scan teeth into computer, rearrange teeth, produce output for devices that move teeth into new positions like braces.