Additive manufacturing in cultural heritage preservation and product design

As a three-dimensional object, both visual and tactile information of tangible cultural heritage (CH) have valuable historical and contextual significance. For the purpose of preservation, compared to conventional manual restoration and digital archiving, additive manufacture (AM) has advantages in several aspects, in particular, it can produce accurate replica for people to “feel” it by touching. In addition, AM is not only able to produce a replica for artifact but also provides a new way for designers to create products which are recognizably linked to cultural heritage. Through these creativities, AM can help bridge the “old” to the “new” and bring the cultural heritage experience from museum to “people’s” daily lives. Nevertheless, the limitations on materials and color scheme restrict the application of AM to the CH area.

In this chapter, case studies from publications were analyzed, and relevant projects conducted by the authors were presented and discussed. It shows that plastic materials are usually used to get a precise replica, but post-processing is needed to improve the appearance and to achieve the verisimilitude with the original artifact. In addition, a process chain was proposed to act as the guideline for the integration of AM with other techniques.