You can build a functioning scanner from a projector. You just take out the light, replace it with a decent LED light and a diffusing cone like you can find in hobby stores (the commercial scanners probably get their diffusing cones 3D printed or something), a USB3 camera (monochrome!!) and a lens (the second-most expensive part), a hall-effect sensor and a magnet to trigger the camera to take a photo, and the most expensive part, a workstation PC so you can edit and encode your scans. You also need to mount the camera on a track so you can focus it precisely as these cameras have a shallow focus. All up maybe about $1500-2000 plus the cost of the PC if you’re buying a projector to use as the film transport. If you have colour film then you can either pulse the LED light C/M/Y to get a triple-flash scan but this will be much slower, or you can buy another USB3 camera. You are limited by the speed of USB3, or if you had a 6K camera with a faster connection to your computer somehow, then you’re limited by the speed of the SSD array. So keep that in mind. There’s no point in buying a 60fps 2K-USB3 camera if you can’t send the raw frames over USB3 at that speed.
One of the hardest parts will be getting the gate in focus, as projection is more forgiving, this is why an engineered polished steel film gate for a commercial scanner might cost $10K, because the job of the film gate for a scanner is to keep the film flat and at the correct focal distance. As an engineering student though I expect you’ll be able to solve this problem when you come across it with a gate modification engineered to keep the film at precisely the same distance from the camera.