Making 3D Replicas Using a Flatbed Scanner and a 3D Printer

This paper describes a novel approach to making 3D replicas of nearly flat objects using a flatbed scanner and a 3D printer. The surface reconstruction is based on the fact that the light in a flatbed scanner shines under a given constant angle and the CCD sensor records different intensities depending on the angle between a local normal vector of a micro-facet and the vector towards the light source position. The scanned object is rotated by 90° and thus four different images are obtained. It enables normal vector estimation followed by a surface reconstruction based on analogy with solution of partial differential equations. 3D replicas are produced using a 3D printer based on the data from the surface reconstruction. Due to high resolution of the flatbed scanner, resulting replicas are of a high precision as well. This method can be used e.g. in making replicas of archaeological parts.