3D printing is on the rise these days as this phenomena has evolved from laboratories to consumer products. Nowadays thanks to several products that got funded from Kickstarter and startups that are working on making this technology mainstream, 3D printing is something every tech enthusiasts wants to do and is dying to have a 3D printer and a 3D scanner in his home or office.
Now a company called Matterform has come up with a simple and affordable 3D scanner called The Photon 3D scanner. This particular 3D scanner is currently seeking funding from public at at the crowd funding website IndieGoGo. The most important feature of The Photon 3D scanner is that it is small in size and looks like a usual paper scanner when closed. To use it users can unfold it after which a scanning surface appears where users can put the things they want to scan.
The surface tray of the Photon 3D scanner rotates allowing the camera of the device to fully scan each and every part of the object. The lasers and camera of the device collect the data about the object and transfer them to the computer. This whole process takes around 3 minutes to complete, which is quite impressive.
As the Photon 3D scanner is not that large in size it can only scan objects that are as large as 9.75-inch tall and 7.5-inch wide. The company behind the Photon 3D scanner Matterform is also developing a software that could be used along side this 3D scanner in order to make the process easier for home users.
The Photon 3D scanner can be yours if you pledge $392 to the project before the time for the campaign runs out. Right now it has received over $40,000 of its $80,000 goal with 32 days still remaining.
It is a nice device that is perfect for someone looking to try out 3D scanning as an enthusiast. It is small in size, easy to use as well as affordable. Users will be able to scan things, edit them and print them using a 3D printer if they have one. They could also share their scans online.
You can view more details about the Photon 3D scanner and pledge to this project by going to its IndieGoGo project here.