CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Preserving Sculptures With 3D Scanning And 3D Printing

makezine.com: This raggedy old sculpture is something that I love having around. I know it looks like a pile of old tires and rusty metal bits, and not so much like a toad, but I still love it. As you can see, at one point in time it was a fire sculpture. The valves slowly died and I retired the fire system, relegating the fire toad to a charismatic yard ornament.

1 comment:

Ari Cobb said...

3D printing things always intrigue me since there are just so many different things that can be done with them. This article kind of reminded me of what Ben Carter was telling us in Advanced Fabrication about how some museums are taking 3D scans of ancient sculptures and whatnot and uploading the STL files that can be printed. It’s so cool that you could print your own scaled version of some ancient artifact at home! I think this is a pretty cool way of getting to preserve things, as well as it means you get to have mini versions of them to keep around. The article makes it seem like this process is pretty simple - or at least in the sense that it’s not extremely extensive. I think it would be fun to try and scan some of the things I’ve made and see how they come out as prints. (Though I don’t have a 3D printer so that would complicate things somewhat…)