Precise Military and Industrial Parts in the field and on-demand

With NASA investigating whether it is practical to 3D print parts in Space, and EADS investigating whether it is practical to 3D print parts on the battlefield, it's interesting to look at the products that EADS chose for its pilot. They were:

• A Faro ScanArm, able to capture 20,000 points per second with accuracy of 0.035mm
• Use of GeoMagic Studio software, to convert the point cloud into a water tight 3D polygon surface
• Conversion to STL format via Materialize Magics software
• 3D Printing in Titanium using an Arcam Electron Beam Melting (EBM) system