More and more consumer 3D scanners are becoming available

Nov 8, 2013 15:41 GMT  ·  By

3D Systems has announced the Sense 3D scanner, a new handheld scanner available for the relatively cheap $399 (€298) from the makers of the Cubify line of 3D printers.

3D printers are old news; 3D scanners are all the rage these days and for good reason. One of the big and unexpected hurdles behind getting involved with 3D printing is getting good at 3D modeling.

A 3D scanner solves this problem by making it possible to create models of existing objects without too much 3D modeling experience.

"Sense includes powerful, intuitive software that lets you crop and enhance with easy, automated tools. Sense is made for life on the go. Its hand-held mobility gives you the freedom to scan anything, anywhere, anytime," 3D Systems boasts.

"With features such as automatic object recognition, objects can be extracted from busy backgrounds, scanning only the object you want. Easily heal, smooth, remove features and fill holes with the Sense quick edit software," it adds.

The device is much smaller than MakerBot's Digitizer and a lot cheaper too, more than three times less expensive. It's also handheld so, in theory, you can use it to scan much larger objects than you can with the Digitizer.

That said, the Sense still has to be tethered to a computer, so it's not exactly portable. The fact that it's small, relatively cheap, and that it's handheld doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in the quality of the scans.

3D Systems put a lot of work in making the device user-friendly, and it shows. From the get-go you can choose whether you're going to scan small, medium, or large objects. You then walk around the object you're scanning and the device warns you if you go outside of the optimal range. Still, it remains to be seen how it behaves in practice.