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The LEGO 3D Scanner

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Slightly off-topic, but definitely cool enough to mention: Philippe Hurbain built his own 3D scanner using Lego Mindstorms :)

Philippe writes:

I am a LDraw parts author, and as such I am always interested to find new ways to model LEGO parts. Many parts have a clear geometric structure and are relatively easy to create, but parts like the frog pictured above have no defined geometric shape and are very difficult to model. I toyed for a while with the idea of a 3D scanner... The solution came with 2008 LEGO Technic sets that include a new part, the linear actuator. These nifty device convert the rotation movement of a motor into a linear movement. Coupled with the high resolution of NXT encoder, I had all the elements to build a 3D scanner, precise enough for my purpose.

Read the rest of his story and check out some results on his website. The results are as good as you can expect by using toys for such an application, but it's still verrrrry cool indeed!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

9 Comments

  1. lego rocks, in fact whole compters should be build as lego blocks ,just click in a new processor block or graphic chip , Intel and lego a match made in heaven!

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