Has anyone ventured into or have experience of 3D scanning. An aquaintance of mine wishes to investigate 3D scanning with a view to printing parts out on a 3D printer.
I hate questions like that. Gets me looking into the subject and getting interested.
I can't help much. I know it's being done. I expect you've already googled the subject.
Depending on the part, it may be easier to a) take measurements, b) draw it up, c) print it, d) test it, go back to 'a'.
As a side note...there's also programs that take 2D images and convert to 3D for printing. I tried it once (can't remember the program) but didn't have much success (mainly because of the crap printer I had at the time).