At the Walters Art Museum's annual Art Bytes hackathon, our team set out to recreate a full scale replica of a well-known piece of Baltimore art: Giuseppe Ceracchi's "Bust of George Washington". With the help of the Direct Dimensions, we were able to take an impressive micron-resolution 3D scan of the statue. Printing the full scale 3D statue would have required professional equipment, and a lot of time and money. So instead, we crowd-sourced the effort. Hobbyists around the world own desktop printers that can print small scale objects. Using 3D modeling software, we sliced the full scale model into 110 unique blocks that home printers would be able to print at home. We created a website that allowed contributors to join our project, download a piece of the model, print it at home, and mail it back to us for re-assembly. The website was live and functional by the end of the hackathon, and a few weeks later our 3D printed replica of George Washington was complete and on display at the 2014 3D Print Show in NYC. By distributing and crowdsourcing the effort, the maker community was able to build something special together.
We The Builders
2014