Take a Picture with Your Smartphone and Make a 3D Printed Copy

3D printing is moving forward by leaps and bounds and now, a smartphone app may make it even cooler. Scientists have created a new chip that may one day allow your smartphone to precisely scan and object, and then sends that scan to your 3D printer.

Any time you want to make an exact copy of an object with a 3D printer, you need to produce a high-resolution scan of the object with a 3D camera that measures its height, width and depth. This 3D imaging has been around for decades, but the most sensitive systems are generally too large and expensive to be used in consumer applications.

Now, though, this may change. The researchers have created the nanophotonic coherent imager (NCI). Using an inexpensive silicon chip less than a millimeter square in size, the NCI can provide the highest depth-measurement accuracy of any 3D imaging device.

"Each pixel on the chip is an independent interferometer-an instrument that uses the interference of light waves to make precise measurements-which detects the phase and frequency of the signal in addition to the intensity," said Ali Hajimiri, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The new chip uses a detection and ranging technology called LIDAR, in which a target object is illuminated with scanning laser beams. The light that reflects off of the object is then analyzed based on the wavelength of the laser light used.

"By having an array of tiny LIDARs on our coherent imager, we can simultaneously image different parts of an object or a scene without the need for any mechanical movements within the imager," said Hajimiri.

The new chip has the potential to be incorporated into a smartphone which could then communicate with a 3D printer. This could be a huge step forward for 3D printing in general.

The findings are published in the journal Optics Express.

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