1

hi all, I’m an artist exploring the possibility of reproducing sculptures with 3d printing. I’d very much like some info to get started.

What kind of scanner would I need?

I am planning on life size portrait heads.

Would an inexpensive material be paintable?

What price per head am I looking at?

thank you,

David Wooddell

2

Hi David,

we work with artists and sculptors. Our customers generally come to us with a file of their work that has been scanned. We produce a 3D print and then the artist will cast from it.

We also work closely with Marcin at My 3D twins hub he does scanning and full colour. Or of course you can check us out at Irongiant3d. I would add a link but I’m replying on my phone and not sure how to do it, sorry. If you do contact my 3D twin please mention us.

All the best with your project.

if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask through our hub.

kind regards,

Nadia

3

Thanks Nadia, I’m planning on buying a hand scanner. Those work, right? Is it that simple? Can you offer ballpark figures for printing life size heads?

4

Hi. It depends which hand scanner your buying and how much it costs and what resolution you want. We don’t currently use scanners so I could not say how easy it will be.

As we print in resin it would be very expensive

for us to do them. It would be better to use full colour sandstone available on the my 3D twin hub.

5

How expensive is very expensive?

6

Our printer prints in layers of 16 microns so an object of that size would probably take about 60 plus hours to print and cost in excess of £1500

that kind of expensive.

7

Thanks. I thought this website was hooking me up with Boston companies. You’re not using dollars, so I guess that’s not the case. That’s not a terrible price.

8

The original Boston is in Lincolnshire in the UK :wink:

the resin we use is paintable and if you want work like that doing I’d be happy to ship it!

9

Ah! And both Bostons are tech hubs. Go figure.

Thanks, I want to be able to have some face time and see things up close.

Thanks for all your time

10

Hi David,

As an upfront disclosure I work for Fuel3D, I’d like to help out on the scanner side. Fuel3D have a handheld scanner called SCANIFY which is particularly great at capturing in depth details and facial scans instantly. Without going into too much detail you can see some scans made similar to your requirements below:

https://www.fuel-3d.com/portfolio/sculpture-360/

https://www.fuel-3d.com/blog/2015/09/11/30000-year-old-figurine-scanned-and-printed-in-3d/

Also here is an interesting non-bias review which would be handy in making your decision: http://www.aniwaa.com/blog/review-fuel3d-scanify-portable-3d-scanner/

Aniwaa is a good website to look at if you wanted to do more research into 3D printers and scanners.

Feel free to message us or give us a call if you’d like any help, we’ve done some work on 3D printing heads etc.

11

Actually where the same i am also looking for 3d scanner