Spanish Company Scans and 3D Prints Every Resident of Village

A Spanish 3D printing firm demonstrated a new scanner by creating 3D scans of all 318 residents of Torrequebradilla, a small village in southern Spain, in just one day.

The event was part of a nationwide promotional tour organized by Grupo Sicnova to advertise the scanning speed of the Clonescan 3D, a seven-foot scanning apparatus, which markets itself as “the 3D scanner for the automatic digitization of people on a massive scale.”

“Our goal is to make possible that everybody [in Spain] gets (his or her) own 3D model for free,” said Ángel Llavero, CEO of Grupo Sicnova.

To accomplish their feat in Torrequebradilla, Grupo Sicnova invited every resident to step inside the Clonescan 3D, which can scan a person in just 15 seconds. All a user has to do is enter the model’s height, and four infrared sensors work simultaneously to render an image within 90 seconds.

The image is then converted into a file in a cloud-based storage system, which participants can later access through Clonescan’s website. Sicnova’s software is compatible with most 3D printers.

The residents of Torrequebradilla will receive their personalized mini sculptures, printed in color, which Sicnova have dubbed “clonesculturas,” later this week.

Sicnova is planning similar events in other Spanish cities to gain further attention for their scanner, which reportedly runs for about $28,500.

Interested consumers not living in one of Sicnova’s designated promotional cities can also obtain their own free digitized figures by going to a Grupo Sicnova 3D store, where the portable Clonescans are housed, though they will have to print the figurines themselves.

While scanning a whole village is an innovative advertising technique, the technology itself is not new. Quikscann3D, a company located in Encinitas, California, has been offering full body scans — which take just five seconds to complete — and personalized 3D sculptures since 2013.