(Image credit: Tom's Hardware) While 3D printing has been rapidly advancing and the list of the best 3D printers changes on an almost weekly basis, 3D scanning technology has been making slower but steady progress toward becoming a consumer-friendly technology. With many 3D scanners dropping in price to around the cost of an entry-level 3D printer or laser engraver, it’s a great time to get started and learn about the technology. While some of these scanners launched several years ago, they remain competitive due to continued software updates and strong performance when capturing geometry. To explain it simply: most 3D scanners work by capturing a point cloud and stitching it together to make a 3D model. This can easily add up to hundreds of thousands or millions of points, so there is a lot of data to process, align, and stitch together to create a 3D model.…