A 3D scanner is an amazing piece of equipment that is capable of producing 3 dimensional digital images of an object. In short it can turn a physical model into a 3 dimensional digital picture. At present, the entertainment industry is perhaps the place where it is used the most. This allows the technicians to do more realistic special effects by taking pictures of objects that cannot be used in real life. This way it is possible to recreate it as many times it is needed for a scene. It is not only in the film industry, the video game industry also makes use of 3D scanners on a regular basis.

Other areas where this type of technology is used is in industrial design, prosthetic design, reverse engineering and for the preservation of historical artifacts. Valuable historical and archeological artifacts may need to be preserved and in doing so correct technical data such s the exact dimensions will be needed. When prosthetics are made exact measurements are needed to recreate the object. In reverse engineering a specific part may need to be faithfully recreated. For all of these actions 3d scanners can take precision engineering and manufacturing to new heights.

A 3D scanner is similar to a regular digital camera. The similarities are, they both will have cone shaped views and you can only take pictures of unobstructed objects. The difference between the 2 is that the finished product will obviously be different. 3D scanners take pictures by creating a set of points around the object being scanned or photographed. Afterwards these images are extrapolated by a process known as reconstruction.

There are several different types of 3D scanners. One scanner is called a coordinate measuring machine and it does the job by coming into physical contact with the object being scanned. Visual scanners on the other hand use light, X-ray and ultra sound to help create 3D image