I had some links of folks who have made their own 3d digitizers. (some may be out of date though) I am puzzled why such things are not dirt cheep now. A $5 laser pointer with something to spread the light, and a $15 USB port video camera would be all the hardware necessary. With the new generation of multi-megabyte cameras, such a device would even be pretty accurate. However, the software to do anything with the results of the scan seems to be the biggest challenge.
A scanner based on a laser pointer;
http://thaumaturgy.net/~etgold/scanner/
An extremely interesting approach using nothing more than a desk lamp, stick, and a video camera;
http://www.stanford.edu/~weyn/223b/
Same concept, different person;
http://sans.chem.umbc.edu/~nicholas/...alresults.html