He scans his current EDC!!! A Maxamet PM2 in this case. If anyone wonders why/how the counterfeits can come so close, well this is just one of many reasons. This particular portable laser scanner is good to just 0.002”!!! That’s almost within machine tolerance of many CNC’s. I didn’t spray my knife down with the powder “developer” spray, so the reflective metal surfaces didn’t come out as nearly as good as they could have if I had, but they’re still pretty darn good all things considered. This laser scan consists of nearly 100,000 small triangles! Screen grab images: Hope you enjoyed! Pretty cool tech, but kind of scary at the same time.
Wow that's amazing. Forgive my ignorance but I know very little about this tech.........If one was to disassemble the knife and then scan the components could that digital information be used to program a cnc machine to reproduce the parts?
Yes, it absolutely could! Even from this basic scan, I am able to easily output an .stl file, that is good enough that it could be directly fed into any one of several types of additive manufacturing machines (think 3D printer, stereo lithography, selective laser sintering, direct metal laser sintering, etc.), and a dimensionally accurate model could be produced. Again, pretty cool, but scary too.
cool stuff. $70k is a big hit, but I'm sure the costs will go down over the next couple years. Counterfeiters dream tool.
It is. The $70K includes the scanner, the (proprietary and required) scanner software, a high-end engineering laptop with good graphics capabilities and 64GB of RAM, and large Pelican-style carrying case for everything. Other laser scanners can be had for a lot less $$$, but they aren’t nearly as accurate either. However, I agree, I’d bet something this good will be had for ~$10k within 5 years.
It's funny to think Star Fleet replicators will eventually get here, along with possibly every other magical thing humans have dreamt of throughout history.
