What is the purpose of 3d scanners

[curious aardvark]

3d scanners are amazing - as long as you have very deep pockets indeed.

The 'cheap' ones aimed at hobby 3d print enthusiasts, are largely - useless for anything requiring proper accuracy.

The industrial ones, on the other hand are ansolutely amazing, and start at around £20,000.

I've bought a few cheap scanners over the years, and they are a complete waste of money.

I can generally replicate a part with digital calipers and openscad much faster than scanning, and with complete accuracy.

But if you have the money .....
Then your ocean really is full of oysters !

[PinePure]

3d scanners are amazing - as long as you have very deep pockets indeed.

But do expensive scanners provide cleaner results? I mean the better the resolution is, the better scanner can capture small surface imperfections.

And what about photogrammetry? I was researching scanners, but stepped into this explanation - https://www.artec3d.com/learning-cen...photogrammetry the fun thing it's from 3d scanners developer, so I was expecting they would say "Photogrammetry is useless, buy a scanner instead" - but it seems that photogrammetry can achieve pretty same results, but much much cheaper. ?ctually it seems that some types of 3d scanners are in fact photogrammetry devices, just more automatizes.