Tired of taking pics of your coin? Why not get a 3d scan?

Rob790

Saw this site and thought it was interesting. But won't work on slabbed coins.

3d touch probe scanner

Here's an example:



I think it's cool.

FC57Coins

When they can show colors and textures then we can talk - it's a start I'll have to admit.

solid

That's really cool!

I hope it doesn't leave 60,000 pin-pricks from the touch probes on soft $20 gold...

EagleEye

The scan time listed was 15 to 20 hours! Seems like they need to fix that too. They need to also image the color, and the luster. I'd like to see the coin put into the "Doom 3" light engine to show the luster in various lighting or as you rotate it.

aem4162

taking pix of my coins improves what little photography talent i have and i get to use my beautiful canon s400

airplanenut

I think good ol' photography works much, much better

Rob790

Well, I thought it was cool cause I'd like to get a 3d scan and feed the data into a milling machine and make a large copy to hang on the wall. Reminds me of the giant 6 ft Saint Double Eagle that Heritage has hanging outside it's building. I'd like to have a 6ft copy of an 1804 dollar obverse and reverse! That would be very cool!

Solid, I think that if you were to use a soft material like Aluminum or Tin, there would be no contact marks- a slow moving soft probe with lighting fast digital feedback would eliminate any damage to the coin.

FC57Coins and EagleEye, I really didn't mean for this as a replacement for photos. But you could take several color pictures (a few to capture the color and very many to capture the luster) and map it to the surface to create the right look, but I'm not sure how that would be an improvement over regular picture or video technology.

I think the value of this technology would be in recreating enormous 3d models of rare coins. Your right though Rick, 15-20 hours is a long time for a scan but that gives a rate of about 2 seconds per point and probably can't be improved on very easily using only one probe without risking damage to the coin or lowering quality. I guess you could use lasers to speed up the scan time.

I remember reading about the mint using a similar technology in an attempt to improve die making efficiency where they had virtual designs that were cut into a steel die via a computer but found the results to be less than satisfactory.

I still think it's cool, maybe I'll build one and see if they'll let me scan an 1804!