Casting an Aluminum Souvenir | Scan, Print and Cast Aluminum

As a 3D tourist, taking a photograph is sooo last century. Now, even our phones are equipped with 3D scanners, although not yet powerful enough to do what I show in the video, they soon will be. Calling into question why do we not capture our vacation memories in three dimensions? Since moving to the Detroit area in 2005, I have always enjoyed walks on the public grounds at Cranbrook. Daniela and I have been partial to Marshall Fredericks’s sculpture “The Thinker“ and that is the subject for my trip into 3D digital tourism. This sculpture was installed outside the Cranbrook Museum in 1940 as a sort of tongue-in-cheek reply to the more famous “The Thinker“ by Auguste Rodin, installed outside of the Detroit Institute of Arts just down the road. For this video, I will use a Revopoint POP scanner to capture the sculpture in 3 dimensions, then print a verification in carbon fiber and ultimately cast an aluminum snapshot to live permanently on a shelf in our home.