What do you do when you have a rather large 3D print to produce? One that might take weeks to complete? There’s a surprising answer.
Todd Blatt organized the printing of the fellow pictured above, which is a life-sized duplicate of a real sculpture of George Washington. We’ve seen this print in person at the NYC 3D Printshow and it’s huge. George is much bigger than he would have been in real life. Printing such a thing is a massive undertaking.
The problem was solved when Blatt organized a crowdsourcing effort to produce the piece. The 3D scanned model was sectioned into bite-sized pieces. Each piece was assigned for production by volunteers, each with their own 3D printer. The pieces were gathered together and assembled into the final sculpture, hence the whimsical title.
Production in this way can happen quite quickly, as dozens of 3D printers were brought to bear on the problem. Parallel 3D printing is much faster than serial printing.
This could be a way for even larger works to be produced. The only catch is that each piece might be a slightly different color. Or a lot different.
Via Todd Blatt