Recently the media picked up a story about how 3D printing saved the day to produce valves for an intensive care unit in Italy to treat COVID-19 patients.  The Italian startup company reverse engineered, and 3D printed these valves that are key components of Venturi oxygen masks that are connected to ventilators.  

When you read the details however, you realize they jumped various legal hurdles to do this - the valve is protected by copyright and patents with its blueprint not released but in an emergency case such as this one, the hospital seemed to have allowed them to reverse engineer the valve and 3D print them.  The CEO of the company that 3D printed the valves is now is explaining what his intentions were on his Facebook post and LinkedIn video (in Italian).

When emergencies of such enormous scale occur as is happening right in front of our eyes, you just want to help if you have the capability and technology to solve the problem quickly. But regulations exist to ensure safety and durability thus everybody in the 3D printing industry is doing a thoughtful balancing act. 

It is not clear if they used a 3D scanner or just used calipers to do the reverse engineering but 3D scanners can play a key role in enabling accurate and quick reverse engineering of physical objects.

Using 3D scanning technology, you can capture the surface dimensions of complex physical objects accurately and quickly especially with the structured light 3D scanners, then then reverse engineer with various CAD software such as Geomagic and Solid Edge which comes bundled with EinScan Pro 2X & 2X Plus to create a blueprint that can be 3D printed. 

Have a look at how you can reverse engineer products that are missing a blueprint by using 3D scanners.
https://www.growshapes.com/einscan-pro-2x-3d-scanner-series-bundle.html
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Have you ever wondered which technology within 3D scanning would be most suitable for your reverse engineering, measurement or inspection needs?

Trimech hosted a great webinar where Artec explained per below, how different 3D scanning technologies cover different spectrums of industrial applications. 

Growshapes carries HP's and Open Technologies' structured light 3D scanners which are stationary, not handheld like the Artec 3D scanners.

While the handheld scanners enables to move around especially large objects more easily, the stationary models like HP Pro S3 or Open Technologies Cronos uses an automatic turntable whereby small to medium size objects are placed onto the turntable which rotates at set angles, making the alignment more accurate and easy, achieving 50 micron level accuracy even with the mid-end HP 3D scanners. The Open Technologies Cronos can achieve 15-30 micron level accuracy.

Different applications require different 3D scanners as you can see above. You may need a stationary one vs. handheld or vice versa.

If you are not sure which is the best 3D scanner to buy for your needs, just call us or email us so we can help you. 

​Even if Growshapes do not carry the exact product you want, we have a great network in the industry and we are more than happy to help you connect with the right people to get the 3D scanner you need!

growshapes and the soon-to-launch Silicon Valley 3D Printing Accelerator will be hosting an Open House this evening from 6:30 to 8:30pm at their Santa Clara office for the Silicon Valley chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA-SV).

As part of the Open House, growshapes CEO, Geoffrey Doyle will give a brief presentation on biomimicry and industrial design. His talk will focus on how the development of new structures (or combining existing structures in new ways) enables the development of new 3D printing materials. Geoffrey will also illustrate how new structures and 3D printing technologies will dramatically impact the way prototypes and products are manufactured.

There will also be product demonstrations:

• growshapes :  DAVID 3D scanner, netfabb 3D software (which facilitates Selective Space Structures), Augmented Reality for building design, Mcor IRIS color 3D paper printing, Afinia desktop 3D printing
• Octave: desktop 3D printing (various models, including Makerbot)
• UpTech3D: prototype design for 3D printing
  
  

The growshapes team also runs the SVForum 3D Printing group, as well as 3D Printing for Education Meetup, to educate the Silicon Valley on emerging corporate 3D printing and scanning technologies.

Registration information can be found here.