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Can someone tell us what the relevant metrics are in this space? Capture time? Accuracy? How is accuracy measured?

Accuracy is measured in distance - a bound on the maximum distance from any scanned point to the true surface. Manufacturer accuracy ratings should be taken with many grains of salt.

Makerbot is claiming +/- 2mm. In comparison, high-end laser scanners claim accuracy in the tens of microns, 50-100x better than MakerBot.

12 minutes is a slow capture time for small parts like that.

$1400 is cheaper than any good 3D scanner on the market, by far. The only competition is a Kinect, which costs much less but doesn't have enough detail for small parts yet.

Hmm, I wonder if a LeapMotion device could do it. It's more accurate than a Kinect.

Totally different technology - motion sensing does not = high resolution object capturing

$1400 is cheaper than any good scanner on the market, true.

But this is not a good scanner.

This is a hobbyist-class scanner like the ~1100USD CADscan (http://cad-scan.co.uk/) and the 599USD Matterform Photon (http://www.matterform.net/). These and the Makerbot product share essentially the same technology.

The next level up from this would be something like NextEngine (>3000USD to get going): http://www.nextengine.com/.

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