Threeding.com, a rapidly expanding 3D printing community and marketplace, recently joined forces with Artec 3D, a cutting-edge producer of professional-grade scanners, to announce a phenomenal reality-capture venture which aims to preserve a large trove of Eastern European artifacts at the Stara Zagora Regional Museum of History in Bulgaria. The museum will obtain royalties from the 3D model sales on Threeding.com in addition to making available free digital copies of the scans for scientific and educational purposes once the project is complete.
Threeding, which was started by Tzveta-Maria Partaleva and Stan Partalev while at the Bulgarian National Academy of Art, has already finished the project’s first phase thanks to the high-resolution Spider and Eva scanners and accompanying software from Artec. They were able to successfully scan Greek, Roman and Thracian artifacts and have two more scanning sessions scheduled in September and October to digitize prehistoric, Middle Age and modern artifacts.
“The ability to capture these artifacts in digital form and make them available via Threeding.com has given students and educators access to pieces of history previously unknown. Artec’s professional handheld scanners can capture even the most intricate artifacts with extreme precision and detail to create exact replicas, which, through efforts like this one, are becoming available to the masses,” said Artyom Yukhin, president and CEO of Artec 3D.
By working with the museum, Threeding can add to its growing list of 3D-printed offerings with historical Eastern European sculptures, votive tablets, marble capitals, architecture details and much more. Threeding already has more than 500 unique museum objects for sale in 3D printing-friendly formats thanks to its partnerships with other museums, particularly the National Museum of Military History and the regional historical museums of Varna and Pernik in Bulgaria.
“It was a great honor and privilege to work with the Stara Zagora Regional Museum of History. The museum is one of the best-organized and well-established organizations we have ever visited. Working with such an institution is another step forward in our aim to become the leading repository for 3D printable models of historical artifacts,” said Partalev.
In a time of growing threat to antiquities, due to both religious conflicts and issues of ownership, the value of capturing these objects digitally with 3D scanning and printing cannot be understated. For example, Sindika Dokolo, a Congolese businessman, recently launched an effort with 3D scanning techniques to repatriate African art plundered during colonial regimes and place in western art and historical institutions. In other parts of the world, the extremist militant group ISIS (or ISIL) has reportedly been destroying religious artifacts in their territory, including demolishing an ancient site in Palmyra, Syria. Scanning and printing objects in 3D offers an opportunity for institutions and individuals around the world to host replicas of items of cultural importance while the originals remain in their rightful country of origin. Should they be lost or destroyed, these 3D replicas would become the only record available.