There are so many amazing projects going on in the 3D printing world that, as repetitive as it may get, it is always best to contextualize them. The latest project from Voxelijet (and you know that when the German company is involved the size of the prints tend to get large) is a 3D printed 1:100 investment casting mould of St. Lambert’s Cathedral, in Liege (Belgium), which was destroyed in 1794.
It is the latest in a series of projects (see the Afghani Buddhas), that want to use 3D printing technologies to bring back lost cultural and artistic treasures from the past. St. Lambert’s (or Lambertus) Cathedral in Liege (Luttich) was one of the largest ever built. It was destroyed after the “révolution liégeoise”, considered to be a symbol of the Prince-Bishop power.
Only the columns of the original Cathedral remain today, so, to create the 1 x 2 x 1.35 meter (in height) model, Voxelijet had model builder and designer Pierre Jacob to perform a 3D scan of an already existing wooden model. All dimensions were subsequently interpreted and reproduced using software to integrate more detailed historical elements.
The plastic model for investment casting was developed at Voxelijet’s service center using PMMA Plastic a material designed specifically for investment casting (which is basically lost wax at an industrial level) applications. This process not only drastically cut time to production and costs by reducing model establishment times but also allowed for an unprecedented amount of detail to enrich the final version of the model.
Not to mention that the digital model can now be stored for further development and, who knows, perhaps one day in the future we will use a gigantic high-res multi-material “contour crafter” to 3D print the Cathedral back into existence, this time, though, on a 1:1 scale. Just joking, I do not really think that will – or should – happen, but a high definition digital and printable 3D model of any of history’s lost treasures will always be priceless, even if it is just in terms of cultural value.
