Replicating Stock Designs with a 3D Laser Scanner
Accurate Shooter writes ...
For more than a century, makers of rifle stocks have used large, complicated mechanical duplicators to reproduce stock designs. These contraptions rely on mechanical linkages to follow the lines of a stock and reproduce the shape on a new blank. Now new 3D scanning technology and CNC milling systems may render the mechanical stock duplicator obsolete.
Very nifty.
Read more about it at AccurateShooter.
The amount of data does not surprise me. I worked for a company (Quantapoint) that does this same sort of thing with hundreds of scans to make models and drawings of entire buildings and facilities.
Teh resolution you could achieve back then in 2000 with the lasers of the time was beyond impressive, I could only imagine what can be done now.