What a model train project can teach us about the future of 3D scannin

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CHamilton

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What a model train project can teach us about the future of 3D scanning and printing

When people discuss the “next industrial revolution”, there’s a legitimate focus on the wild possibilities offered by 3D printing. But, in some cases, that’s only half the story: the flipside is 3D scanning, and an excellent demonstration of the interplay between these two emerging technologies can be found in the recent activities of some British model train enthusiasts.

The hobbyists have established a startup called The Flexiscale Company, which launched a Kickstarter project on Monday that aims to fund the production of model kits for several old and very obscure locomotives, the Ffestiniog Englands. If recently-announced plans to 3D-print a moon base are all about creating futuristic designs, The Flexiscale Company is trying to recreate designs of the past.
 
If this catches on, modelling will never be the same again.

There are so many trains that are not avaialble as models commercially, or that are available but the models are so coarse and inaccurate that we wouldn't want them on our layouts.

Of course scratch building is one solution but not everybody has the time and/or skill for that.

If this catches on there will no longer be an excuse for not running the trains you want as you want them.
 
More on the company discussed above.

3D printed railroad engine model kits made from insanely hi-rez scans

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Chris sez, "The oft-touted promise of 3D printing is of personalisation and customisation. There is an alternative use though which is that of mini and micro-manufacture, where production runs of things numbering hundreds and thousands are suddenly made possible and in some cases commercially viable.

"We're investigating this space as a new way of manufacturing model kits, using laser scanning to get the data for the prototypes to make the kits very accurate. The financial advantage of 3D printing in producing kits at whatever scale people want to model in, often from the same file, is huge and makes the creation of very niche items viable. We're experimenting with crowd sourcing what potential kits to explore and using crowd funding to decide what to focus on and make."

Chris and co are scanning full-sized railroad engines at insane resolution.

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We realised though that some things that you want to model were too complex even for incredibly talented CAD model makers like Vijay to create perfectly just from photographs, or at least that the time taken to produce the model would be too long and the process of checking the model’s fidelity would be too involved and too risky. We looked into 3D scanning and found a firm, Digital Surveys, who normally scan petrochemical plants and oil rigs and who specialise in “as built” surveys.
 
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