Video
From Deep Time to the Far Future 3-D scanning and 3-D Printing in Archaeology
Transcript
Bernard Means: So I’m going to talk a little bit about 3-D scanning and 3-D printing, and I’m going to talk a little bit about how my lab works. I like to start philosophical, because I am a university teacher. So my motivation for getting involved with 3-D scanning and 3-D printing was in part to share stuff with the public. So a lot of what I do is sort of public outreach. We began as a partnership with the Marine Corps Base Quantico under a Department of Defense legacy program grant, basically to test out a 3-D scanner and see how it could be used for archeology, and particularly enhancing access to the Marine Corps’ archeological collections and, by extension, the rest of the Defense Department. So you’ll see pictures of this. This is the NextEngine desktop 3-D scanner.
Most of the people that do the labor, other than myself at my lab are undergraduate students. So we’ve sort of formed a sort of a center for doing work around students. So if any of you are affiliated with a university, or work at a university yourselves and you’re interested, I’d certainly be happy to talk to people more about how this program works. It’s largely through internships. So we have a formal internship requirement, which I know a lot of schools do. And some of you partner with interns from different universities. So that’s a large part of our labor. And then occasionally we have students who come in and volunteer on a fairly regular basis. There’s sort of an eclectic range of objects that we scan. I think that students find that sort of attractive. This is another one of our volunteers. I do have digital animations in the PowerPoint but they’re not working for some reason. But a lot of the objects that you see in this presentation are available online, and most of them can be downloaded. And we’ll talk more about that in just a little bit. And here’s yet another example. So I’m going to talk a little bit about 3-D scanning. So I primarily do 3-D scanning. I don’t do a lot of photogrammetry, so that would certainly be a good idea for a workshop in the future, for a webinar in the future. The primary tool that we use is the NextEngine Desktop 3-D Scanner. It’s a relatively economical scanner. The scanner itself runs for about three thousand dollars, and then there’s optional software for another thousand dollars, which really isn’t optional. So if you’re looking for this opportunity for scanning, it’s a nice sort of entry point. It is a tabletop scanner. It uses lasers and they basically emit from the scanner, hit the object, bounce back, and the scanner records the shape. The NextEngine scanner can also capture the color of an object. So the object you see here on the far right of your screen is actually from the 3-D scanner. It’s not a photograph of the object itself. And like I mentioned, this is very portable. I took it on a project to the Cayman Islands. So this is me trying to do some scanning on the Caymans. It didn’t work, but it makes a great photo. Another scanner that I’ve used quite a bit is the structure sensor scanner. This is a very low-price scanner. It only costs four hundred dollars. It only works with Apple devices. And basically you can run it off of any Apple device, an iPad or an iPhone or any other kind of tablet. And it does pretty good capture, but it doesn’t have the resolution of the NextEngine scanner. The big advantage is it’s very portable. You don’t need to be plugged into electricity to use it. And so this is one of my Indian colleagues 3-D scanning a sculpture. And so this is just an example of that particular sculpture. So it doesn’t get the fine details of the carvings along the base of the sculpture, but it does a pretty good capture overall. It’s also something that’s really easy to use with the public. It’s pretty intuitive. So if you want the public involved in sort of scanning efforts, this device works out pretty well. Another scanner I’ve used in the past is a Sense 3D Scanner. This is one that actually is tethered to a laptop. I haven’t used it in a while because the software was upgraded for this scanner and it no longer works on my machine. But there is a newer version out. So if you’re looking for another alternative to the structure scanner, this is one that will work with PC devices. And then the latest scanner that I use, and this is a pricier model, the Go!Scan 50. There’s two versions of the Go!Scan. There’s the Go!Scan 20, which is comparable to the NextEngine and suitable for a smaller object, and then there’s the Go!Scan 50, which is really ideal for larger objects. But this is a much pricier option. This is a scanner cost for an academic pricing about $18,000. So if you don’t have a scanner and you’re interested in getting involved with 3-D printing, in particular for public outreach, there are a number of options. One common website is a website called Thingaverse. Some of the models that are on Thingaverse are free. Others are not. I do caution that the models that are on Thingaverse are not necessarily printable. So you’ll find a model that looks very good, but when you go to try to actually 3-D print it, the person who created the model didn’t create it properly. So you do have to use the site with a bit of caution. Thingaverse does have an education page, and it does include archeological items on that education page. But they’re geared more to the old world. And there are also a number of people who have posted some of their archeological collections on Thingaverse. Another site that I use, and post objects on is Sketchfab. So we have our own Sketchfab page and it’s divided into collections. We have about 1100 models up, I think, at the moment. This is a wide range of archeological, historical and paleontological items. If you’re looking for things on Sketchfab, or for models to use, Sketchfab is probably the place that I would actually start. The models are not necessarily free, but many of them are. Sketchfab, if you have the ability to do 3-D scanning yourself and you’re a cultural institution, they’ll give you a free professional account, which allows you to post fairly large model files. And if you just search museums under Sketchfab, you’ll see quite a bit. The British Museum has items up there as well as other museums. Another website that is useful, and with Sketchfab and with MyMiniFactory, the models may be free. Some of them do come at a cost. The advantage to MyMiniFactory is they’ve actually tested and made optimal every model that’s on there. So any model that you see is 3-D printable. And with Sketchfab and Thingaverse both, that may not be the case. So if you’re looking for stuff, this is also another good place to go. For more technical models, you might look at Morpho Source. This is becoming particularly common in the biological anthropology and paleoanthropology community. And here you will have to request access to a collection. And you may have to request access to an individual model. Morpho Source allows people to keep track of who’s downloading the objects. So some of the museums that we work with will allow us to show the models on Sketchfab, but if you want to actually download it, you have to go through Morpho Source and fill out the usage agreement But this is another good source of digital models. So getting back to 3-D scanning itself, when we started, our focus initially was on projectile points for identification. [pause] Occasionally my voice will drop out. I’m fighting a sinus infection, which is always sort of convenient when you’re trying to do these things. So we’ve actually, and the [unclear] laboratory have gone through and scanned a number of projectile points from different key guides in the Northeast, including the [Ritchie?] guide and points that [Joffrey Koe?] did. And this was our primary initial purpose when we were doing the Department of Defense grant. And the idea being is that you’ve had digital projectile points. Somebody who was in the field could sort of basically scroll through a webpage, see a point that sort of interested them, and sort of speed up their identification and speed up determinations of eligibility. We have had some issues with the 3-D scanned objects is that it’s difficult sometimes to anticipate the scale, which is another reason why we turned to 3-D printing. So you can actually create very easily a 3-D printed projectile point typology for your region and carry it into the field. It wouldn’t really weigh anything, and it would be impervious from damage in ways that the real object would not be. We’re also interested in the potential for 3-D scanning for preserving objects. So things like animal bone that you don’t want people to handle, or that have their own sort of issues, would be something that you could 3-D scan and make available. And I’ll talk a little bit about identification in just a little bit using animal bones. Some objects are extremely fragile. This is a Civil War era iron drinking cup. And it was recovered archeologically by people who did not actually have funds to conserve it. So we 3-D scanned it to preserve the object. And the object itself is no longer extant, unfortunately. We have also tested 3-D scanning on leather objects. As you can see, this is a leather boot from the 19th century from Philadelphia. And the scanning process worked fairly well. So this is a way to record and document objects that you might not have conservation funding for. As part of the work that we do, we partner with a lot of institutions. We really don’t have much of an archeological collection ourselves. So we’ve been working with institutions to help them document and preserve their collections. And focusing on items that have either deep cultural significance or items that are sort of evocative of the museum itself. And so we began working with the Fort Lee Regional Archeological Curation Facility when we first established the lab, because this is where Quantico stores its objects. And from the perspective of Quantico, this is not a convenient location. It’s hours away from Quantico. Several hours, depending on how bad the traffic is.
But one of the objects they had us scan was this navy toy blimp. It’s an object they have in their museum. It was recovered archeologically. Dates between World War One and World War Two. And they wanted to make sure they could sort of enhance people to come into their museum. It’s something they had a hard time with. So this is one of the objects they thought would sort of draw people to the museum itself. And if the animations worked, you would see the functional version of this object. We’ve also worked with a number of cultural heritage institutions that are non-military during our years, including George Washington’s boyhood home, which is located very conveniently in the town that I live in, recording different objects for them that are used in interpretive programs. And some of the recording that you do, you can do with laser scanning, actually reveals details that you might not otherwise see. So this is a Masonic pipe bowl that may have belonged to George Washington. And it’s not, for that reason, it’s not handled very much, and it’s kept in storage. But we’ve 3-D scanned it. And once we did that, the archeologist noticed some attributes of the design that they had not seen. Which aren’t so clear in this red-printed version. There are some elements that go around the pipe bowl that are a little hard to see in the real object. And this is a particularly popular artifact. This is a wig hair curler. And we’ve 3-D scanned a fair amount of these. And these are up on Sketchfab, and I just got permission to make them downloadable for those of you who are interested. And this is an object that was used to style the hair of George Washington’s brothers. But it was done by an enslaved person. So you sort of, with one object you get sort of the lowest realm of society, colonial society, and the upper echelons of colonial society. James Madison’s Montpelier has been very generous with access to their collections. They’re particularly interested in objects associated with the period that James Madison was there, and objects that are associated with enslavement. They’ve been working very closely with the descendent community. So a number of the objects we’ve scanned from there are associated with the descendent community. Including this quartz crystal, which was found by members of the descendent community in a slave cabin. Gunston Hall, also yet another president who owned enslaved people. This is one of the objects they had us scan. And this is actually one that I’ve gotten the most reactions from when I do public programs. So it’s a brick and you can see the impressions of an enslaved person’s fingers here. And you can pick up even the printed replica, and you can actually put your fingers in that. People react to that quite a bit. This object is available and downloadable on the Sketchfab site. We do work with non-archeological museums. This is a key from Edgar Allen Poe that was supposedly found on his body. So if you’re ever in Richmond and you want to see the key to Edgar Allen Poe’s trunk, and the trunk itself, you can go to the Poe Museum. We do work with the park service on occasion. And this is a couple of objects that were recovered archeologically from Manassas National Battlefield Park. This was a ritual cache that was found, should actually say, it is, yeah, it’s a post-Civil War site. But I use this myself for talking to people about why context is so important. So the projectile point itself is a late archaic point that was found in a 19th century context. For those of you who actually work perhaps more on the paleontological end of things, I began working with a number of paleontological museums, and have actually helped a number of museums establish their own 3-D scanning/3-D printing efforts. You know, our ultimate goal of all these museums is to safeguard collections and make them accessible to people for educational purposes, for research purposes, and for other reasons. And so the Western Science Center is one of our partners that’s allowed us to use some of the different tools. So here you can see a student using the structure scanner, actually, to record a mastodon skull. And I mentioned the NextEngine scanner is portable. So I also took it to California to scan this mastodon bone. And then more recently, I’ve been working with a number of museums who want access to collections that are at the Smithsonian. And I’m convenient to the Smithsonian, so I’ve been recording different things for them. And this is actually a fragment of giant ground sloth dung that a museum needed for an exhibit out in California, the Western Science Center. And people really react to the giant ground sloth dung for some reason. So here’s a 3-D printed copy. Which is freely downloadable, for those of you who might be interested. One of the biggest projects we’ve done recently is with the National Constitution Center. And this one sort of hits all the marks for the sort of public aspects of 3-D scanning and 3-D printing. So we selected artifacts that were recovered archeologically from the site where the National Constitution Center was constructed. And this was done for a number of reasons. One was to have the files digitally available to teachers that teach in Philadelphia and beyond. The other was to be able to create 3-D printed replicas that could be used in education and also in exhibition. So I’ll show you some examples of the latter. This is a carved wooden boat that ended up going on exhibit, the real one and the replica. Then there’s an object that actually sort of crosscuts archeology and paleontology and history. This is a mastodon tooth that belonged to Ben Franklin. Which if you’re interested, is also available for download. And then one of our newest sort of partners we work with is a museum in Ohio, where we’re working with them to 3-D scan a mummy’s sarcophagus. And this will be used to create a touch table where people will be able to slide through a digital table and go sort of peel away layer by layer to go through the top of the sarcophagus, see the mummy, and go to the bottom of the sarcophagus. The Isle of Wight County Museum, it’s a small museum with a sort of eclectic collection. It does have a Ham Cam, for those of you who are looking for different public outreach options. This is literally a camera pointed at the ham 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And people do tune in and watch Ham Cam. And in fact, the last time I 3-D scanned the ham, which was a couple of months ago, I had people all over the world emailing to try to figure out what was going on. So if you’re looking for an interesting public outreach technique, a webcam like this might be useful to you. And one of my students was quite enthusiastic about helping scan the ham this past summer. We began collaborating with a university in India. And this is actually a way that a university which is in a remote part of North India can make their collections available. It’s really hard even if you’re in India to get to the museum. And they’d like people around the world to see their collections. So this is certainly a big, powerful part of digital documentation, sort of this digital humanities approach is getting collections out of museums, or out of the backs of museums, and getting them to people who might be interested in looking into the past. I’m a little cognizant of the time, so I want to make sure we have time for questions. And we actually began working with them because they were having issues with their NextEngine scanner. It is kind of a finicky device, so it takes a little practice to get it to work. You’ll often see them actually appearing on eBay pretty inexpensively by people who get frustrated with them. So if you’re looking for a cheaper version of the NextEngine, eBay might be a good place to start. The advantage of once you have the 3-D scanned object, you need quite a bit of it, you can actually, Sketchfab, the nice thing about Sketchfab, is it’s a web-based access, so you can use it on any device. So that’s certainly handy. And of course, 3-D printed replicas are another way of getting the collection out. And particularly, it’s a lot easier when I’m talking to school groups or talking to the public, to work with 3-D printed replicas than the real objects. I can pass them around to individuals so they can look at the objects. If something gets lost or stolen or broken, I can make another. And I always try to overproduce the objects that I have. So if the teacher comes by and is interested in something, I can pass that on to them. It’s a way for them to actually go back to their schools and try to get their tech people involved. So a lot of the history, archeology, social science teachers I deal with re not necessarily technology enthusiasts. Maryland Archeology Month last year had us scan a number of items so that they could promote archeology and promote the access to archeology. So they wanted to make sure that if people were interested, and saw some of this stuff from Saint Mary City, for example, they could go to the Maryland Archeology Month website and download the objects to either look at on their own computers, or to 3-D print, if they had a 3-D printer. So I’m going to talk for most of the rest of what I’m going to talk about is about 3-D printing. I think that’s one of the more accessible ways for getting 3-D models out to people. When I first started working with 3-D archeology, my idea was that I could get the public interested in looking at computer screens and manipulating objects. And I found out very quickly that people want things that they can touch. And one of the advantages of 3-D printed objects is that, the 3-D scanned objects that are 3-D printed, is you can tell people that this is not an object that was designed on the computer screen. But it’s one step removed from the real object. And that seems to have a power to people. And there have been museums that have worried about 3-D scanning and 3-D printing, and making those files accessible. The few studies that have been done indicate that if people see or handle a 3-D printed object, it actually makes them want to actually go see the real object, as opposed to sort of quashing any desire to see the object since they have a replica. They want to actually go see the real item itself. And of course, people are always surprised that they can touch the replicas. I did an event at Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia this past weekend. And parents would bring their kids up to look at the replica objects and they would say, you know, “Don’t touch it.” And I would be saying, “No, go ahead and touch these items.” And then people sort of, it’s a little challenging for them to sort of get beyond that, particularly in a museum setting. But 3-D printing does allow people to really interact with the past in a way they couldn't otherwise do. You don’t have to have a 3-D printer to 3-D print. There are a number of commercial companies out there. The biggest one that’s out there right now is a company called Shape Ways. They will print an object in just about any material you can think of. So they have metals and glasses and plastic. If you want a solid gold object, you can have them print it. The size of the object and the material sort of govern the cost. You might also have 3-D printers in your community. A lot of libraries—university libraries, school libraries, public libraries-- have 3-D printers. You might also find maker spaces or hacker spaces are pretty common in a lot of communities. And they’ll have 3-D printers that they’ll often let you use for a nominal cost. I should add, 3-D printers are somewhat annoying. (laughs) So if you’re not really sure about 3-D printing, working with a maker space or a library might be a good way to go. As far as 3-D printers are concerned, there are two kinds of 3-D printers that are the most common. One is a printer that basically uses an optical cured resin. Right now, these can only print small objects. The ones that are available to regular consumers can only print small objects. But they can print them quite accurately. And they don’t have little lines in them that you could see with the other kind of 3-D printer. But they are messy and they are expensive. And they’re expensive also to run. The kind of printer I use primarily is called a fused deposition modeling printing. There’s also other terms as well. And basically this takes strands of plastic, superheats it into thin threads, and lays the plastic down. And that’s simply the way these printers work. And the thickness of the lines, the visibility of the lines, is governed by the capability of the printer, but also the settings that you use. I have some animations but they’re not working so we’ll just sort of skip through them. Most of the 3-D printed objects are actually not printed solid. So this is an example of a piece of pottery that actually had a little power outage so it stopped printing. But it gave me an opportunity to give you an example of what one of the interiors of one of these structures looks like. It has about a 10 percent infill, so that’s strong enough to hold the object up even under sort of rigorous handling. But it takes a lot shorter time to print something with a 10 percent infill than it would, say, with a 90 percent or 100 percent infill. When you do print the objects, most of the objects we print archeologically are sort of complex shapes. And so you’re going to need to have supports. And that’s what you see here, to hold up the parts of the object that overhang. If you don’t use the supports, the objects will not print properly. There are printers that will print dissolvable supports. But most of the common printers don’t. So you have to use various tools to sort of remove them. And we basically use pliers and wire cutters and things like that. And we dremel as well. We also, once we have the printed object, it’s going to be a solid color. There are printers that will print in color. But they’re right now not particularly inexpensive. So we just use basically acrylics to paint the object. And we’ve developed a number of painting guides for the main categories of objects that we print, and those are freely available on the website that we have. So if you’re looking for painting bone or rusty items, we have a guide for you. And so one of these is the real object, and one of them is not the real object. And I actually don’t remember which is which. So our goal is not necessarily to create an exact replica of an object but basically to give it sort of verisimilitude to kind of look like the real object. And it’s sort of that museum rule that where if you’re standing about six feet away from something, it should look real. But if you get within six inches, you should be able to tell that it’s not. And that’s certainly true with the 3-D printed objects, even if they’re painted. And like I said, we have very basic guides, like painting rusty or paint to look like bone. There are things you can do with 3-D prints that are certainly advantageous. So this is that same smoking pipe bowl. You can make things bigger, if you want. This can be really handy if you’re talking to a large crowd and you want people to sort of see what you’re talking about. The small pipe bowl would be hard for even a class of 30 to see. But the large one I can hold up and point to different features of the object. And then I mentioned earlier the ability to create 3-D printed points. So you can actually create a complete type collection without actually having the types. This is particularly handy, as I mentioned, for taking into the field if you want an identification kit. It’s great for teaching about archeology. What I use it in my classes, I print multiple sets and I can divide my students into groups. And they’re quite aware that they’re all sort of learning from the same set of tools. And you can even create a typology that you put on the wall that has all the main types for your area. And the ones that you see that Liz is pointing to on this board actually have Velcro on them so you can actually remove them from the board and compare it directly to an object, and then put it back on the board if you so choose. And for zooarcheology, I think the 3-D printed replicas are particularly useful. Because when you’re doing animal bone identifications, it is kind of hard to do that when you’re looking at a bone on the screen, or even in a book where it may not be properly scaled. And one of the advantages of 3-D printed replicas as opposed to a book, even if it is properly scaled, is that you have all the objects. You’re not limited to a couple of static views. And we’ve actually used 3-D printed replicas of an artifact compared to the real item to make identifications. You can build a bone type collection pretty easily using 3-D models that are available. And it’s particularly useful for extinct species. So I’ve been approached by a number of individuals who are interested in our passenger pigeon digital files, because they think they have passenger pigeon in their collections. But they don’t have a type collection to compare it to. So we’re working to make these models freely available so people can download and use them as they need to make their identifications. Forensics is really useful as well. I’ve been working with a forensic anthropologist who’s a little frustrated with the available forensic models that you can get from commercial vendors. They’re very expensive. Often it’s a complete item, like a complete femur. And when you’re teaching students, you want to be able to teach them from parts of bones, because that’s more likely what you’re going to have in a forensic situation. So using 3-D printing is a very quick way, an easy way to create something that would be useful for teaching forensics. So I mentioned painting of the replicas. So here we see some examples of the painted replicas. And once you have the painted replica, it’s really useful for using in public education, teaching archeology. So this is another wig hair curler. And when we were working with George Washington’s Ferry Farm and teaching field school, the 3-D replicas were very useful for public outreach. This is particularly true because you would have regular public tours every day when you were in the field. You wouldn’t necessarily find artifacts that the public would find interesting on any given day. But you could have the replicas that were 3-D scanned from items that had been found in the previous field seasons or even previous weeks of the current field season. And you could pass those around and make people aware of the kinds of things you were finding, and also explaining their significance. Public models are great for going to outreach events. If you’re trying to get out and get the people to be aware of your sites, going to things like maker fairs or comic book conventions, things like that. It’s great to bring the artifacts with you. I can literally fill a suitcase with hundreds of objects from all over the world and it doesn’t weigh anything. I can set it out. If the public picks it up and drops it or somehow something vanishes, I’m not so worried about that, because I know I can make another copy. Just a couple of examples. People really like the giant ground sloth humerus that we have. We worked with Jamestown to create a public archeology program. So people will come and do tours of the site, and not necessarily go to the museum. So that public archeology tours are in part to talk about the archeology of the site, but also to encourage people to go see the real objects in the museum. And the museum is not very far away from the public digs. But for some reason, people don’t want to go into the museum all that much. And so this dog jaw, it’s a butchered dog jaw, is a great artifact. Because it’s a way for the interpreters to segue from talking about colonists being desperate enough to consume their dogs to colonists being desperate enough to resort to cannibalism. There is actually a link that is available here. I won’t show you the video because I’m not sure it will work. But it sort of illustrates one particular artifact from discovery all the way through the printing and painting process. And this just a set of one of the interpreters, education leaders requested that we create comparable sets for all of their interpreters, so they could highlight different aspects of the archeology message that the folks in Jamestown were trying to get across. This is actually just to me an amusing graphic created by one of my students. We have worked with a number of museums, and we’re continuing to work with museums, to integrate digital preservation, particularly digital printing, into their exhibits. We did an exhibit in our library that I won’t go into details. But this was meant to be a tactile exhibit so people could come by and read about archeology and actually touch objects that were affixed to these sort of portable stands. Talked about all the sort of various aspects of the kinds of research we were doing. Our first major work with a museum was in the Virginia Museum of Natural History. They wanted to do an exhibit highlighting objects from all over the world, but particularly from Virginia. They didn’t really have a budget, and so we were able to create 3-D printed replicas from key collections throughout the state, throughout the world. And this is something that would have been hard for them to do if they were trying to deal with real objects. Because with real objects, you have to take into consideration things like insurance and security. With the replicas, there was some theft and loss of replicas, but we could make another replica to replace that one. Or in some cases, overproduce objects that we knew were going to be sort of problematic from a theft standpoint. The nice thing about creating this exhibit was that the objects were placed at an accessible level. So if you were in a wheelchair, you’d be able to touch the objects. And in some cases, if there was an object in the museum’s collection, you could actually then look and see the real object behind glass. That also allowed the museum to create different sort of hands-on exhibits using replicas, like this animal bone identification exhibit. In some cases, you have people that would like to highlight particular events. And you have a limited number of artifacts. So for the anniversary of the War of 1812, we were asked to produce a number of objects from a site in Washington, DC, that a number of different organizations wanted to highlight the same day. And they couldn’t do that with the real objects, because there weren’t that many. So we created sets of replicas that could be taken around, both during the anniversary of the Battle of Bladensburg, and then of course afterwards. And did I mention the National Constitution Center? This has been the biggest major exhibit we’ve done so far as far as museums are concerned, permanent exhibits. So they asked us to 3-D scan and 3-D print a number of objects for them. And if you go to the National Constitution Center, there’s an archeology exhibit. And on the wall, there are replicas that are fixed to the wall that tell stories. So these are objects that are designed to have great information potential. And so these are objects that are designed to have great information potential. And then on the opposite wall, you can see the objects in glass. So the different sort of colors you see for the exhibit backgrounds, actually keys in to colors that are used in the exhibit itself. We did actually a little work with the Virginia War Memorial. This is Russell Scott, who’s in his late nineties at the moment. The museum highlights his World War Two experience. We actually 3-D scanned him. And here you can see the 3-D printed replica scaled to the airplane that he bailed out of during World War Two. There’s the world’s oldest ham, of course. They also have a peanut from 1890. And for us archeologists, it’s very convenient of somebody will actually write the date on the objects that we find. So we 3-D scanned, 3-D printed quite a number of peanuts for them. And they ended up incorporating a replica into their exhibit. And people could see the replica, and also nearby is the real artifact as well. I mentioned working with museums, giving them access to collections. So this is another artifact, actually it’s a fossil that we 3-D scanned for the Western Science Center that’s in the Smithsonian. So it’s something that would have been cost-prohibitive for them to obtain, even if they’d brought their own scanner, to fly to DC, scan an object that would have taken a couple of hours, and then flying back to California. We’ve also been working with a number of partners to make collections accessible to sort nontraditional audiences, particularly the visually impaired. So we worked with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, it used to be the Virginia historical Society, to scan a number of items and have them test it out with visually impaired visitors. And the Library of Congress is also working on creating access to their collections. And Tamara Rorie, who you see here, who’s blind, actually was able to answer some great questions from the audience. Because one of the things that people, when they see 3-D printed replicas, they react to, is that the objects themselves, they don’t weigh anything. And they’re rarely the same weight as the real object. But, as she pointed out, if you’re a visually impaired person or a blind person and you go to a museum and something’s behind glass, I mean, you’re not seeing it at all. So being able to hold a replica, even if it’s not the same material or the same weight, is a way of seeing. And that if you’re a sighted person, you’re not touching the real object anyhow. You’re just actually using your eyes. You’re not getting the weight or the texture of the material. 3-D printed replicas are great for teaching archeology. I’ve talked to my students about doing presentations so they can incorporate the objects onto their posters. I’m going to start wrapping this up. It’s great to talk to school groups. You can pass things around. This little kid here was sort of a hoarder. Everything ended up on his desk, so everybody went over there to see the objects. A lot of teachers are using the models for teaching. When I teach archeology classes, it’s great because I can work with lots of different replicas, even do a mapping exercise. A lot of this is actually on my blog site. So if you’re interested, you can go to the blog site and see some of these exercises or learn more about the work that we do. That is actually my last slide, so I can answer some questions. Mike Roller: Great, thanks, Bernard. Folks out there, feel free to ask some questions. You can ask through the call line, or type a question into the chat. Bernard, could you tell us your blog address? Sure. It’s VCUarcheology3D, three being a number, 3D.wordpress.com. And if you’re looking for us on Sketchfab, we’re Sketchfab.dom/virtualcurationlab. And virtualcurationlab is all one word. Roller: Anybody out there have any questions? My question, Bernard, is given the kinds of requests that you’re getting from archeologists and preservationists, so giving you some constraints, what’s on your technology wish list next? Means: So my technology wish list, I would like to get the Go!Scan 20, so I can more easily scan smaller objects than is necessarily easy to do with the NextEngine or the Go!Scan 50. I’d like to have a large-format printer. I’m printing a lot of large things. And now when I do it, I have to section the object and print it in multiple pieces. So it would be nice not to have to do that. I also need to take more advantage of sort of the augmented reality and virtual reality options that are out there. So a good VR or AR viewer, like an Oculus Rift or something like that would be perfect. And then I mentioned a little bit about photogrammetry, but I didn’t really go into detail. But proper photogrammetry setup would be useful as well. And more hard drive space. (laughs) Roller: More hard drive space. Okay, we have a question out here from Jack. He says, Bernard, what software are you using to repair the scans for 3-D printing? Means: The software that I use for, so there’s different software I use. I will often edit, finalize editing of digital models in a program called Mesh Mixer. And Mesh Mixer is a lot easier to use than some of the other software that’s out there. And then if you’re actually 3-D printing, it kind of depends on the 3-D printer you’re using. I primarily use Maker Bot printers. And those have their own sort of native software that they use. So that’s primarily what I’m working with as far as 3-D printing software is concerned. But there’s a number of different options out there. There’s one called Simplify3D, for example, that people use. And then there’s a question about why I prefer scanning to photogrammetry. There’s a couple of reasons why I prefer scanning to photogrammetry. One is that I’ve been doing scanning longer than I’ve been doing photogrammetry. But it’s also something that’s a lot easier to sort of just, especially with the NextEngine. You sort of set it up and you can do other things while the scanning’s happening. And one of the sort of disadvantages, advantages of scanning over photogrammetry is that while you’re scanning, you can usually tell as you’re scanning whether or not you’re getting a viable model. Whereas when you’re doing photogrammetry, the post-processing is something that might take some time to get an accurate model out of. And in some of the places that I work, running a computer for two or three days would not be an option. Whereas I can scan an object in an hour and then edit it later on. Is the NextEngine scanner still a viable piece of hardware in today’s market? It’s still the best resolution for the dollar a pound. There are some other options out there. But for right now, the NextEngine is still, I think, a very viable piece of hardware. But there are a couple of scanners that have come out. If you go to my website, there’s a “resources” tab and I actually list some of the other scanners, as well as some of the other software that we’ve used. And we’re getting close to the point, too, where phones are actually going to come with built-in 3-D scanners. So you’ll pay for the phone and you’ll have that sort of option. There are some phones out there now that actually have that capability. But they’re still a little kind of clunky. Roller: I have kind of an anthropological question for you, Bernard. Means: Sure. Roller: So in your experience, do you think that there are contexts in which making a replica and distributing it might be a violation of privacy in the future? Do you foresee any of these? Means: Yes, so that’s definitely a question people are raising right now is about access, and who has access. Some people are sort of flipping it around about why should museums keep real objects when they could make a good scan and they could return the objects to the original individuals. But probably sort of the most direct example would be related to NAGPRA. So I’ve done some NAGPRA-related projects. And Zack Selden, who’s at the Center for Heritage in, CHRH, Center for Heritage Research [Center for Regional Heritage Research], I forget what it stands for. It’s at Stephen F. Austin State University. He does quite a bit of NAGPRA work. So some, different tribes have different perspectives on the 3-D scanning. Some of them will allow 3-D documentation, but not 3-D public access. Other organizations will allow the ability to 3-D see an object, but not to 3-D download it. And I think the Smithsonian actually, and if you go to their website, and I can’t remember where on their website it is, but they actually have a Tlingit mask that they 3-D scanned with permission. And the Tlingit treat the 3-D printed replica as a real object. So every year it has to go through certain ceremonies, the same kind of ceremonies you would use with the real object. So it has sort of that authenticity, even though it’s a replica. But the Tlingit can keep the real object safely in their sort of own access. But there are people out there questioning about sort of the rush to make things available for public access. My sort of basic rule of thumb is that I, I don’t make things accessible unless the museum that I’m working with agrees to make them accessible. So somebody asked about hard drive space. Is there an average 3-D model size? There is not an average 3-D model size. It depends on the resolution of the scanner and the complexity of the object. So the more complex the object is from a shape perspective, the bigger the file will be. But generally speaking, most of the files I deal with run in about the 10 to 50 megabyte range. I do have some objects that are bigger. We store them on various backup hard drives. I cannot store them on a university server because the servers at our university will not create a server that is not accessible by other people. And so because some of the objects we have are sensitive, we don’t make them available. We do have a Google Drive, we have unlimited Google space here, so we have objects there. So those are actually restricted to people who have access. So Google Drive is one way to do it. And then we store objects on SketchFab as well. Even objects, so there are objects on SketchFab that are not downloadable, and may not even be visible unless you have a passcode. Roller: Any other questions out there? Means: If you go to my website, the “resources” tab does have some articles out there. Some of them are sort of less technical than others. And you can feel free to email me if you have a question you haven’t thought of to raise here. I’m pretty good about answering my email. Karen Mudar: Bernard Means: Yes. Karen: This is Karen Mudar. Hi, how are you? Means: I’m fine. Karen: I wanted to ask you if you thought making 3-D replicas will affect the antiquities market at all. Means: Right now, the 3-D replicas are, 3-D printed replicas are easily distinguishable from the real object. If you’re going to try to make something for sale on the antiquities market, you’re probably not going to go to, turn to 3-D printing to do it. You’ll probably fake it in another way. So right now, I don't think that’s an issue. Could it be an issue in the future? Maybe if you have a simple object, like if you had an iron object, and you can print in some metals, then you could potentially create a replica that might fool some people. But there are easier ways to make fakes than with 3-D printed replicas. But I could see people selling stuff that are 3-D printed as being real. But the buyer would know right away. Karen: Thank you. Means: Sure. Roller: Great. Any other questions out there? All right. Let’s wrap this up. Thanks, folks. Thanks so much, Bernard, for your talk. Means: Thank you. Roller: Thanks everyone for showing up and for asking great questions. I want to thank Archeology Southwest, our collaborators, for helping us with this webinar series. We’re going to take a break with the webinar series for the holidays. And we’re coming back, January 24th we’re going to present our John L. Kotter Award winner for best project award. The Urban Archeology Corps is going to present on their series of programs that they did over the course of the year. About four or five participants are going to talk, each about the project they did engaging youth in archeological education across the country. And that’s about it. The webinars are being recorded and they’ll be put up on our website. If you want a link sooner or later, than just email me at Michael_Roller@nps.gov and I’d be happy to provide you a copy of this. Thanks again, Bernard, so much, and thanks everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time. Means: Cool. Thank you. 56:19
Description
Bernard Means, 12/13/2018, ArcheoThursday
Duration
1 hour, 11 minutes, 57 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
12/13/2018
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