The second and yet first of its kind, paradoxically enough

Jan 10, 2015 10:18 GMT  ·  By

The first 3D printable 3D scanner we wrote about is the one that a company by the name of Fuel3D decided to introduce at the Consumer Electronics Show this year (CES 2015). And yet that may not, in fact, be the first of its kind.

Rather, it is the Atlas 3D Scanner that truly deserves the title of “first 3D printed 3D scanner,” depending on your view.

The product is the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. A very successful Kickstarter campaign too, apparently.

Only a few days old, the 3D printed 3D scanner has already reached its funding goal of $3,000 / €2,530, and then some. In fact, the sum accumulated so far is over ten times that amount. And there are still 27 days to go. Yes, that long.

The Atlas 3D Scanner

Invented by a designer called Uriah Liggett, the scanner's Kickstarter campaign was launched through Murobo LLC (a platform company he created) and relies on the Raspberri Pi credit card-sized PC.

Which is to say, the framework may be 3D printable but the electronics are not. It will be years, decades even, before we can entrust complex things like that exclusively to robots.

The design is open-source, both in terms of hardware and software, even though Ligett developed both sides on his own.

The physical part was kind of easy. The man just had to design some components that could clasp together, including the turntable and the skeleton.

The software, however, had to be created from scratch, and Ligett had to scrap several initial drafts before he finally settled on a viable firmware. Even that one had to be rewritten and updated many times.

All in all, it was a lot of effort put into something he originally set out to create as a means to create his own household item models and replicas. He calls the software FreeLSS.

Availability and pricing

Initially, he wasn't going to turn the device into a marketable product. But once he started using the scanner, he ended up posting lots of the designs online, and the resulting positive response eventually led to the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. So we suppose that the scanner is a lot older than the few days it's been up there, even though some final tests still need to be carried out.

You can order an Atlas 3D Scanner for $209 / €176. There were some lower-cost options, which didn't include the Raspberri Pi, but all of those have been claimed.

Photo Gallery (5 Images)

Atlas 3D Scanner
Atlas 3D Scanner, full viewEarly prototypes
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