XYZprinting just recently announced a combination 3D Printer and Scanner in one unit. It's called the Davici 3D 1.0 Aio or All in one.
Targeting a price of $799 it will allow you to scan a 3D object and then print a copy. It's reported to be available by the end of 2014.
Speaking of scanning, I had a plastic clip that held a decorative header for vertical blinds in my house that I couldn't find a replacement. They snap in place and I have broke a few over the years. I was down to my last two so I decided to try and 3D print one.
I considered drawing it in TinkerCad but decided to try a scanning trick I read about. You can scan in a drawing on a paper scanner, and then convert it to a .svg, using one if the many online converters, and then import it into TinkerCad to make it 3D.
So I put the clip on my canon printer/scanner and then converted the scan to .svg and imported it into TinkerCad. The problem was the outline of the clip was solid and the clip was hollow. So I merged it with a solid block and converted the outline of the clip to a hole in TinkerCad thus leaving just the clip in solid. I resized it in the X and Y direction based on measurements of the original clip and then sent the resulting .stl file to my Davinci 3D printer.
My printer was loaded with black plastic so I printed a test unit in black. The picture above shows the results. A perfect copy. It snapped in place and held the decorative piece in place perfectly. So now I can print more in white and make more in the future any time I break one.
And I never had to design it, just scanned it in.
This is awesome. It won't work for every object but this object was the same width top to bottom and was flat on both sides. Who needs a new 3D printer/scanner when I have my paper scanner at home?
RSS Feed
