Jesse's 3D Scanning Page

Interesting thought. Regardless which scanning tech you use, you would need a good macro lens to scan that close range. Here are a few options:

It may be difficult to scan with our technology (Primesense Kinect-like devices) until the Primesense Capri is finally unveiled... http://www.primesense.com/news/you-asked-for-it/ You could do something similar to the Makerbot Digitizer...

http://www.roclay.com/techbuzz/makerbot-digitizer-3d-scanner where the lasers and camera are concealed within the corner walls of the CNC/3D/Lasercutter and simply place an arduino-powered turntable on the build platform when scanning. In fact we have some code that can power the turntable with a $5 chip instead of even an Arduino Uno that we'd be happy to provide.

You could mount a go pro or some kind of small, high res camera to the xyz head, and use a cloud-enabled service to process the data like 123D Catch or Cubify Capture (formerly Hypr3d).

You could ignore the CNC/3D/Lasercutter altogether and just make a separate, handheld 3D scanner with a Kinect-like sensor like the Carmine 1.09...

http://www.primesense.com/solutions/sensor/

Here are some links to my friend's (Bernhard) OS 3D scan tech... http://www.primesense.com/solutions/sensor/ http://www.diy3dscan.com/

Jesse