Z Corporation’s newly released ZScanner 700 has made a good impact on the manufacturing industry and has been recognised by Popular Science magazine, the authority on science and technology in everyday life, and NASA Tech Briefs, the large U.S.-circulation engineering magazine.
According to Popular Science, the ZScanner 700 is a winner of the publications’ Best of What’s New Award. Best of What's New is a Popular Science accolade, representing a year's worth of work evaluating thousands of products. These awards honor innovations that not only influence the way people live, but that change the way people think about the future.
Best of What's New winners are awarded inclusion in the much-anticipated December issue of Popular Science, the well read issue of the year since the debut of Best of What's New in 1987.
The ZScanner 700 is one of the first handheld, self-positioning 3D scanner that can digitise 3D surfaces in real time for reverse engineering, packaging design, digital archiving and a wide range of emerging applications. The ZScanner 700 is also one of the first 3D scanner that allows the user to move the target object during scanning while providing the advantage of displaying a real-time, on-screen image of the surface being scanned.
The ZScanner 700’s speed and mobility are ideal for general manufacturing applications but also for medical applications, which explains the Popular Science award in the personal health category. Real-time generation of patients’ unique body part geometry can accelerate the custom design of braces or prosthetics.
NASA tech briefs
The ZScanner 700 has been chosen as NASA Tech Briefs October 2006 Product of the Month, the one product reviewed during the preceding two months that demonstrates practical value and technical merit for the publication’s 190,000 design engineering readers. The ZScanner 700 is a candidate for NASA Tech Briefs Product of the Year, which will be selected in December.
In addition, Z Corporation was recently named the 2006 Bronze Medal recipient of the Northeast Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing, a recognition of the its prowess in the practice of lean manufacturing. The Shingo prize is administered by the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership at the College of Management (GBMP) at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The award was once dubbed the Nobel Prize of Manufacturing by BusinessWeek.
The ZScanner 700 is available through Z Corp.’s worldwide reseller network.