<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Today at the Brooklyn headquarters of 3D Printer manufacturer MakerBot, the company gave the first official demos of the new Digitizer, a $1400 3D scanner that turns solid objects into digital models. The machine can scan any object less than eight inches in height and eight inches in diameter. The Digitizer uses two red lasers and a camera with a band pass filter to filter out all other colors of light. Each laser takes a pass at the object as it rotates in tiny increments on the Digitizer&amp;#039;s turntable\u2014the process is called &amp;quot;sheet of light triangulation.&amp;quot; According to company CEO Bre Pettis, the machine essentially takes 800 tiny &amp;quot;slices&amp;quot; of each scanned object then MakerBot&amp;#039;s custom software stitches the image together to make it &amp;quot;watertight,&amp;quot; eliminating any holes in the digital model. The company says the scanner has an effective resolution of 0.5mm. What looks most impressive is the software, which is remarkably user-friendly. You need only place an object on the turntable, press the scan button in software, choose one of three shades (dark, medium, or light), then wait around 12 minutes for the scan. The Digitizer apparently has some difficulty with black and shiny objects, but MakerBot employees have developed a workaround: simply dust such objects with baby powder or cornstarch. Once the scan is done, you can either upload it to MakerBot&amp;#039;s Thingiverse sharing site, send it directly to a MakerBot printer, or export it as a .stl file that can be imported into most CAD software. The simplicity of the process and affordability of the hardware means the Digitizer could be a more transformative product for MakerBot than even its 3D printers. Turning data into physical objects with 3D printers has plenty of utility for inventors, architects, engineers, and doctors, but turning physical objects into data is useful to all those people, plus animators, artists, game designers, and scientists. Used together with a 3D printer, the Digitizer functions as the equivalent of a photocopier for three-dimensional objects. It also allows you to scale and edit real world objects and reproduce them. These possibilities raise serious potential concerns regarding intellectual property (can you scan and disseminate a Lego brick? a Coca-Cola bottle? a Star Wars action figure?). Now that objects can be easily saved as data, the manufacturing industry is poised to face some of the issues that already dog the music, movie, and publishing industries. The Digitizer launches next month\u2014the world has until then to prepare. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a9470/makerbot-digitzer-first-look-15949391/>