3D Printer - 3D Scanner

With all the 3D printer rage going on, is there such a thing as a 3D scanner?
They would seem to make a great pair.
Scan your broken part in 3D at home. Put the part together or repair the crack digitally.
Then order your 3D part online to be sent to you.
Or maybe have your own 3D printer next to your 3D scanner and make your own parts.
Having both would be pretty close to the Star Trek replicator.
Put the part in the scanner and watch it be scanned and at the same time reproduced in the printer next to it.
If nobody has built one of these, someone should.

Ooops. Google answers that they already make them. And many of them too. I knew that was a good idea!

One of the hardware store chains is already experimenting with 3D printing to order. Metal 3D printers are not cheap.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

One of the hardware store chains is already experimenting with 3D printing to order. Metal 3D printers are not cheap.

JR

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But you could do metal casting with 3D printed molds or sacrificial models, depending on the melting point of the metal used. I don't know which materials are used for each one but I know it's possible. You probably end with a rough finish but that's usually the case with home 3D printed stuff, you always need some afterwork to get a better finish.

JS

I've been thinking about this lately too

A good 3D scanner, printer, some CAD skills and you could replicate all those plastic parts breaking  everyday  (one of the bottle racks in my fridge has broken some days ago and can't get it from the manufacturer)

It could be a nice little company, not sure about the profit-margin making small plastic pieces...

sbranco said:

With all the 3D printer rage going on, is there such a thing as a 3D scanner?
They would seem to make a great pair.

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Indeed. But cheap scanners ($1000-1500) do not perform that well and are very difficult to set up, all for a result that is disappointing when you need some kind of accuracy. These are ok for toys and cheap jewelry.
I recently bought a nice 3D printer for the company and I must say that for about $3k the results are quite impressive and the learning curve not too steep (at least for the kids who work in the company, not for me ).
The shop I bought from had a scanner on promotional sale at about $1.5k, but they dismissed it and demonstrated another, much more expensive (about 4k), and they explained all the differences; things that were relatively easy to do, although somewhat tediouswith the more xpensive one were almost impossibly painful with the cheaper one.
Set up of a scanner is not a simple task, one has to position it in a way that allows consistent multiple scanning, with enough consitency for the software to correctly recreate the 3D map. Don't just believe what I say, have a demo, it's enlightening!

Scan your broken part in 3D at home. Put the part together or repair the crack digitally.
Then order your 3D part online to be sent to you.
Or maybe have your own 3D printer next to your 3D scanner and make your own parts.

Click to expand...

Printing is actually the easy part; it can be done by anyone with a little attention and understanding. Scanning is an art.

Having both would be pretty close to the Star Trek replicator.

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That's what many sellers would make us believe; I can say I was fortunate to meet that vendor who broke the myth.
BTW, I'm not a tough customer; I'm only asking 0.5 mm accuracy on parts that are about 150mm long.