Reducing the CAD barrier with Kinect 3D scanner hack

For some people a lack of CAD designing skills could be what keeps them from printing objects in 3D. Eventhough tools like Google’s Sketchup reduce this barrier, 3D scanning might be the real answer.

Fabricate Yourself
It all started with the latest project of Interactive Fabrication called Fabricate Yourself. This project launched at the ‘Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction’ conference. The ‘tangible’ aspect of the conference made them decide to capture and fabricate small 3D models of the attendees. In order to do so they hacked the Kinect 3D scanner software.

Kinect 3D scanning
At the conference attendees first had to capture their favorite pose in front of a Kinect and save it as an STL file. Next the STL files were printed using a Dimension uPrint 3D printer provided by Stratasys. Dovetail joints where added automatically to the side of the models so later on they could be snapped together like a uge puzzle.

3D scanning
3D scanning might be the way to make 3D printing more accessible. Just hold the object you’d like to print in front of the scanner and there you go.