In the UK there’s a Christmas tradition for those who are interested in, or just curious about, science and technology. The Royal Institution in London (www.rigb.org) have been running Christmas Lectures since 1825, when Michael Faraday was one of their most influential scientists. The lectures have been televised on the BBC since 1966 and for people like myself they are essential Christmas viewing.
Each year the lectures have a different theme, this year the three lectures were entitled “When Sparks Fly : How To Hack Your Home”, presented by Professor Danielle George, an electrical engineer from The University of Manchester.
The third lecture was subtitled “A New Revolution”, and 3D printing was to be shown as an example of what we all believe is probably the start of a new industrial revolution. Ultimaker GB were contacted by the producers to demonstrate what 3D printing can do, and they in turn enlisted Fuel 3D to participate with their revolutionary hand-held 3D scanner.
A 9 year-old girl called Isla Firth, who has suffered a rare form of eye cancer called Retinoblastoma, was chosen as the subject for the 3D print. Andrew Smith from Fuel 3D visited Isla and scanned her facial features and head and shoulders and the data capture was then prepared for printing by Stephen Atkinson, also from Fuel 3D.
Stephen added a circular stand design to the finished 3D head and shoulders mesh so that Isla would look similar to the many marble and bronze busts of famous scientists that are everywhere in the Royal Institution building.
This is where I come in, through my association with Ultimaker GB I was the ‘maker’ selected for this prestigious piece of 3D printing. The timescale was quite a challenge though, everything to be able to start printing only came together on the Friday afternoon before filming on the following Tuesday. The decision on filament colour was the final piece of the jigsaw, and was only confirmed after small test prints of different colours and finishes and consultation with the programme producers. Finally Cyber Yellow PLA by Faberdashery was selected, and they pulled out all the stops to get the chosen material to me.
I split the model into several sections using Autodesk’s Meshmixer programme as the model needed to be almost life-size, and a weekend of virtual non-stop printing followed.
The main facial print was made in one piece without any support or any infill, it took almost 12 hours and didn’t finish until 2am in the morning! When the pressure was really on, my Ultimaker 2 (and a great choice of filament) combined to produce probably my finest 3D print to date.
Over the rest of the weekend all of the other parts were printed (almost 43 hours and 5000 layers in total) and on the following Monday final assembly took place. This model was definitely a mixture of new digital making skills combined with traditional making and finishing techniques.
A photograph of the finished model, the way it was split with the print times, and a storyboard showing the collaboration that is such a trademark of the 3D printing community can be seen on the attachments to this blog.
The reaction of Isla when she was presented with the 3D printed bust was priceless, and very emotional for me. It was such a privilege to make this 3D print for one of the most prestigious science organisations in the UK, and I then was really honoured when I found out that the print will go on permanent display in the Royal Institution collection alongside the marble bust of Michael Faraday - what an achievement after just 10 months of 3D printing!
The lectures are all currently available on BBC iPlayer, and for those outside the UK will be available soon on the RI Channel which can linked to from the RI website.
How could I top this experience? For emotional content I probably never will, but in terms of scale and ambition of what can be achieved with a desktop 3D printer then I think I’ve already managed it. You can judge for yourself after it goes on display at CES International 2015 in Las Vegas next week. The story of that (not so little) project will be for another blog…
Thanks for reading.
Steve from the Birmingham Hub
