Design and Construction of a 3D Scanner and Integration to a 3D Printer (accessible low cost and open source reverse engineering)

Abstract

Built equipment has a 3D scanner with a principle in laser triangulation, integrated to a 3D printer based on fused deposition modeling. The same printer hardware has been used to integrate the peripherals of the scanner: lasers and rotating platform, the camera connects directly to a computer that has software developed to handle the functionalities of the scanner, which obtains a point cloud, and due to integration of postprocessing (surface reconstruction) and laminate tools (g-code), a file is automatically generated ready for interpretation in the 3D printer, closing the reproduction cycle of a model. Due to its low cost and open source, this prototype made accessible performing reverse engineer of an object by means of digital acquisition (3D scanner) and allows its total reproduction (3D printing).

Keywords

• 3d scanner
• 3d printer
• reverse engineer
• surface reconstruction
• computer vision.