3D Scanning: Photogrammetry (Reverse Engineering)

You broke a plastic handle. You can’t buy a replacement. You want to 3D print it, but modeling it is hard. Enter 3D Scanning.

Photogrammetry (Photos to 3D)

You take 50 photos of the object from every angle. Software (like Polycam or RealityCapture) looks for “Common Points” in the photos.

• “I see this scratch in Photo 1 and Photo 2.”
• “Based on the parallax, that scratch is 5cm deep.”
• It generates a “Point Cloud” of millions of dots.
• It connects the dots with triangles (Mesh).
• It pastes the photo texture on top.

LIDAR Scanning (iPhone Pro)

New iPhones have a LIDAR sensor on the back. It shoots lasers to measure depth instantly. It is less accurate than photos for small details, but it is incredibly fast for scanning a whole room or a large robot chassis. We use this to create “Digital Twins” of our competition robot so programmers can test fitting virtual mechanisms while the mechanical team works on the real bot.