Why is there a disparity between these two techs even tho they seem to

3D Printing
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1

Why is there a disparity between these two techs even tho they seem to work hand in hand?
http://everydaydigitals.com/heres-what-i-think/18/iy22ust9o35a12vnuifyvpwb65uwso

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Scanning is a bit of an odd dock. The only real purpose for it is reproduction of more organic stuff - pretty much sculptures and artwork. In theory, it seems like it should be great for building compatible parts or the like, but in reality you need dimensional 3D CAD to do that.

Services like 123Catch are good enough for making a copy of a museum piece you really like. The people who need to go nuts on 3D scanning do it with advanced laser rigs - think the American Museum of Natural History - which can do crazy reproductions of organic shapes for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure that 3D scanning at home really has any drive to hit the gap between super easy and basic stuff you can do with a Kinect or a digital camera and some patience and ultra-high-end stuff like those laser scanning rigs. I’d love to see it, but the use case for it is really narrow.

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Wouldn’t with a good enough (and affordable) scanner make recreating existing things easier to reproduce without having to learn 3D CAD. This could in turn bring in more people into 3D printing as it elevates the need to learn how to 3D model just to use the hardware. Of course copyright infringement is a huge problem that is going to eventually become an issue as scanners become cheaper and printers become more accurate/faster and use more/multiple materials. @Aaron_Isaacs

4

@James_Gobert , maybe for artistic things, but many times the things we 3D print have internal facets, etc that 3D scanners just cannot scan properly. We’d have to move to some sort of imaging tech that can see through objects in order to recreate a lot of things.

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Because it’s easier to make a 3D printer than a 3D scanner. Optics and camera interfacing is a bit more difficult and requires more upfront accuracy. But now that there’s demand, that gap will start to be filled.