The UK's definitive industrial 3D printing and additive manufacturing event returns to the NEC Birmingham next week. TCT 3Sixty will deliver hands on demonstrations with around 200 AM products, and a free two-day conference programme featuring insights on defence, healthcare, consumer products and more. Ahead of his presentation - 'Scan You Dig It? 3D Technology for Museum Research, Conservation and Exhibition' - Tom Ranson, 3D Visualisation Specialist at the Natural History Museum answers a few questions about solving research challenges with 3D scanning, and using 3D printing to allow the public to get hands-on with precious artefacts.
Catch Tom at TCT 3Sixty on the Insights Stage on June 4th at 14:00.
TCT: First, can you explain how you're using 3D technologies to make artefacts more accessible to the public?
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Tom Ranson
TR: My specific lab I am in charge of here at the NHM is the 3D Vis Lab, and we focus solely on surface imaging. So with my laser scanners, light reconstruction scanners and Infinite Focus Microscopes, we image the surface of pretty much anything, to an accuracy of only a few microns, and can then either make that data accessible to the public through portals like SketchFab, or we can be physically printing them out to use in Outreach events.
TCT: What do you see as the big benefit of producing these replicas?
TR: We have over 80 million specimens here on site and can't possibly display them all. This sort of digital replication can allow people to see or even physically hold things that we just couldn't allow people to hold, like Charles Darwin's personal fossil collection!
TCT: And how do you use this to support further research into your collections?
TR: Imagine you are a researcher in Australia doing your PhD on the eating patterns of the Tyrannosaurs Rex. Here in the NHM we hold the holotype (original example that all other T-Rex fossils are compared against) of the jaw. Instead of a complicated and expensive research visit to the UK to assess the microwear in the teeth of the specimen, I can image the surface down to an accuracy of 10s of microns and upload the data to a portal all within a day. We enable research to happen much faster, and then the data is digitally preserved for the next person to access, reducing potential damage to the original by having to get it out again to remeasure.
TCT: Finally, what will be the key learnings of your talk at TCT 3Sixty?
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