With much of the media’s attention on 3D printing the other side of the industry, 3D scanning, sometimes gets overlooked. While 3D printing provides an excellent technology for rapidly prototyping 3D objects from digital objects, the converse allows engineers to take real world objects and digitize them.

Industry experts and engineers now have access to handheld devices that can be used to scan real world objects and make high fidelity 3D digital copies of them in cyberspace.

No, this isn’t the movie Tron—the 80s Disney science fiction film or its 2010 sequel—this about Artec Group, a leading developer and manufacturer of professional 3D software and hardware. Artec Group provides a number of solutions that cover a wide variety of needs.

With prices ranging from $15,000 for minimalistic versions to over $22,000 for more powerful devices, handheld 3D scanners work best as a tool in the hands of industry, academia, and medicine.

3D scanning assisting archeologists

Archaeologists in Ireland from The Discovery Programme and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies used an Artec Eva to scan inscriptions from the Ogham stones, perpendicular cut stones that seem to spring right from the ground. The Ogham stones contain encriptions of the unique Irish Ogham alphabet and constitute one of the earliest written records of the Irish language and history. The stones are exposed to the environment and suffer a great deal of wear so their preservation is difficult and simple photographs don’t do the objects much justice.

With a 3D scanner, and Artec’s specialized 3D scanning software, it is possible to digitize not just the geometric features of the stone, but also preserve the texture and colors in the visible spectrum.

To cite yet-another 80s movie, Indiana Jones may have done better with a 3D scanner than trying to run with that golden statue.

The medical industry gets a boost to prosthetics with 3D

Medical technology, especially imaging, relies heavily on 3D technology. While most people are used to the 2D capabilities of an X-ray machine or the 3D computer aided rendering of an MRI or PET scan for people’s insides, there are a lot of applications for 3D cameras for looking at the outside of people. Perhaps an episode of House M.D. could have benefited from a 3D scanner.

While 3D printing has come a long way for the production of prosthetics, getting the designs for attachment and matching it to the recipient can be difficult. To help facilitate the next generation of orthopedic prosthesis, Artec Group has announced a partnership with Ottobock, a market leader in the field of orthopedics.

Ottoblock will be reselling Artec 3D scanners for prosthesis manufacture.

When attempting to fit a person who needs a prosthesis, it’s necessary to get accurate measurements of the limb that will be enhanced with prosthetic. A 3D scanner also is passive scanning only so there’s no need to irradiate a patient with X-rays or anything else to get a high fidelity image.

The two Artec scanners Ottoblock will resell are the Artec Eva—a handheld scanner that can be used easily on patients—and the Artec Spider. The Spider is a new scanner specifically designed for CAD users, designed primarily for industrial applications such as reverse engineering.

3D scanning software

Aside from providing a number of scanners that fit into numerous niches from industrial, medical, and academic, Artec also provides powerful 3D scanning software. Artec Studio 9.2 gives developers and experts a powerful 3D development platform to import, view, and modify 3D images derived from scanners.

It exports to every major CAD design and even be extended to support automated systems that can grab a scan from a scanner (even automating the scanner) and export the 3D mesh and all its metadata to another system.

Using the 3D software the archaeologists mentioned above could get clear images of the ogham letters inscribed in the stones and in the medical example can even provide accurate measurements from the 3D scan. The UI for the software is designed to be intuitive and easy to use.

image credit: Artec Group, EVA 3D Scanner, http://www.artec3d.com/hardware/artec-eva/