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Restoring China's Forbidden City With 3-D Printing
First time accepted submitter jcho5 writes "China's 600-year-old Forbidden City is looking less forbidding these days. As part of a major restoration, the Chinese Palace museum will use 3D-Printers to re-manufacture and replicate many of the city's most precious and unique objects. From the article: 'PhD student Fangjin Zhang—along with her colleagues at Loughborough Design School in the East Midlands of England—had, for a number of years, been looking into the use of 3D printing as means to restore sculptures and archaeological relics. According to a Loughborough press release, Zhang developed a “formalized approach tailored specifically to the restoration of historic artifacts.” After reviewing Zhang’s techniques, the Palace Museum then invited Loughborough researchers to repair several Forbidden City artifacts, including the ceiling and enclosure of a pavilion in the Emperor Chanlong Garden.'"
dont go there man just dont go there its called forbdin for a reason probaly so just dont go there plz or else the ghosts will get u
-1 insipid?
As I understand it, they take ancient objects from the Forbidden City that are damaged (cracked, parts missing), scan them into a computer with a 3D optical or laser scanner, repair/restore the object/artifact in digital 3D space - using organic modeling tools like ZBrush perhaps - then use a 3D printer to print out the repaired/restored 3D object at 1:1 scale to the original object. It says in TFA, towards the bottom, that the Smithsonian Museum is about to engage in a similar effort of 3D scanning thousands of objects from it collection, and printing 1:1 replicas of them with 3D Printers.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Because probably they'll be doing a single copy of each, using some hard material that substitutes whatever you pour into moulds. Moulds themselves are frequently done by casting a 3D-printed copy with the mould material.
Sadly, Mao and the cultural revolution burned a good percentage of China's history. Things connected to the old dynasties were fare game. Much of their 5,000 year history went in to the fire and they did it to themselves.
Once you start "replacing" the missing parts, you're rewriting history.
Are you?
I'd wager that the majority of people living today still falsely believe that the Greeks and Romans were all about boring unpainted statues, thanks to the false impressions given by not repairing damage.
As a former museum professional, the main problem I foresee is damage to real artifacts being caused by outgassing of the cheap plastics usually used in 3D printing applications. Outgassing and leaching of unstable compound are two of the main reasons preservationists generally are very careful to employ inert (and often extremely expensive) materials when restoring the fabric of fragile historic objects.
Just a thought - does anyone think that China or the Smithsonian will make the scans available to the public?
There's a large number of 3-d printers in the hobby scene. It'd be very neat to be able to download files and print your own replica work of art.
Yeah, and how many fakes are today on display as the original works of art? It's not like the public (and the experts, btw) are that much demanding. And I'd prefer to see an actual replica of a roman house than those rock-piled ruins that end on my knee. How did it look like? Was it painted? Did it have clay walls? How was the lighting? How were the ceilings? Do they used doors, or just curtains?