Dear Marshall, Terry and list,
I collected some numbers about the sales of fast optical 3D-scanners in Germany,
but the information I have is far from a market study. Let me explain how I got
into this. My Ph.D. thesis is about "extracting characteristic lines from
unorganized point-clouds for Reverse Engineering". I wrote in the introduction
of the thesis, that the market for optical 3D-scanners is growing. Unfortunately
my Professor said: "Well, I would like to have some numbers about it" - and so I
had the Problem we are talking about. So what I did was the following:
I contacted the German distributers / resellers of fast optical 3D-scanners and
asked them about their sales numbers. The numbers listed below are the total
sales numbers in Germany per year of the companies:
Digibotics, GOM, Hymarc, Intecu, Kreon and Massen.
1994: 4 systems
1995: 9 systems
1996: 15 systems
1997: 27 systems
I also contacted Steinbichler and Breuckmann, but they refused to tell numbers,
so that is all I have, maybe the information is useful for you.
By the way, if anybody should be interested in the Ph.D. thesis itself (German
version only!), it is now available at "Springer" publishing house and has the
following title:
Formleitlinien fuer die Flaechenrueckfuehrung - Extraktion von Kanten und
Radiusauslauflinien aus unstrukturierten 3D-Messpunktmengen
Author: Ralph Peter Knorpp
ISBN: 3-540-65161-6
Ralph Knorpp
Fraunhofer IPA
Phone: +49 711 970 1831
Fax: +49 711 970 1004
email: rpk@ipa.fhg.de
Marshall Burns wrote:
> Dear RP-World,
>
> I haven't received any replies to a question about the 3-D scanner
> market in a posting a few weeks ago, repeated below for reference. Maybe
> this is because the question was buried at the end of the posting. So let me
> repeat it here and invite people to take another look.
>
> "-- Does anyone have any data on the growth of the 3-D scanner
> market? It would be very interesting to know how this sister market of
> ours is doing, and if they are growing more dynamically than us, there
> may be some things we could learn from them."
>
> I will post again with a summary if replies are received this time.
>
> Best regards,
> Marshall Burns
>
> Marshall Burns wrote on Oct 9 1998:
>
> > Dear RP-world,
> >
> > In the replies to Mike Murphy's request for suggestions on how to
> > digitize a horse's head, I counted citations of at least five new
> > scanner products (3-D cameras?, shape cameras?) that I had not heard of
> > before. This field seems to be blossoming. Two points on this:
> >
> > -- The growth of 3-D scanners is very good news for the
> > fabricator industry. The 3-D scanner is the inverse of a fabricator and
> > it gives people a much easier way to create 3-D geometry data than by
> > designing it themselves in CAD. Ultimately, people will look for ways to
> > output that data again, as copies or modifications of the original
> > objects. Remember, (3-D scanner + fabricator = 3-D copy or fax machine).
> >
> > -- Does anyone have any data on the growth of the 3-D scanner
> > market? It would be very interesting to know how this sister market of
> > ours is doing, and if they are growing more dynamically than us, there
> > may be some things we could learn from them.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Marshall Burns
>
> --
> Marshall Burns
> Marshall@Ennex.com
>
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