Albert Einstein by Jacob Epstein, 1933

thingiverse

Scanned at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Part of my series "3D Printed Portraiture: Past, Present, and Future," cosmowenman.com/3DPPPPF.html, shown at the MakerBot exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2013. Albert Einstein sat for sculptor Jacob Epstein in Britain in 1933, while a refugee from Nazi Germany. Epstein described Einstein's "wild hair floating in the wind" and wrote that "his glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous, and the profound." I scanned a cast of Epstein's bronze portrait in August 2012 in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where it is displayed in a gallery where visitors are encouraged to touch the artwork. I used Autodesk 123D Catch to make the scan. I printed the piece in PLA with a MakerBot Replicator and finished it in bronze with Alternate Reality Patinas. This is my first attempt at the outright duplication of a sculpture scanned in situ in a museum, and I am pleased with the result. My scan captured the rough volume of the features' broader strokes, though not all their individual contours. More time photographing and better lighting would certainly yield a more faithful model. This subject may be a bit of a cheat, though; Epstein's loose style is particularly forgiving, and the nearly uniform, dark bronze patina is pretty straightforward to approximate. And, of course, Einstein's iconic face is so memorable and easily recognizable. His spark leaps through any medium. Cosmo Wenman cosmowenman.com twitter.com/CosmoWenman Instructions I've uploaded several .stl files and .zip archives. All of them are scaled to life-size, 1:1 with the original. EinsteinSolid.stl = The complete head as a single, water-tight manifold. This should be printable, as-is, with external supports. EinsteinSolidWithBase.stl = The complete head as a single, water-tight manifold, with an integrated base. I haven't printed this, so I don't know how well balanced it is. EinsteinShell.stl = The complete head as a single, water-tight manifold, with the interior hollow. I printed a version of this configuration, in parts (see below). Einstein_r1_Shell_Version.zip = The shell version split into 6 pieces, each scaled to life-size and able to fit within the build-volume of a Replicator1. All the pieces are oriented such that none require external supports (or rafts). Includes a loose mounting bracket. I printed a version of this group in PLA; this is the configuration shown in my photos. I printed mine at .18mm layer height, 4 walls thick, hollow, at 215 temp. Einstein_r1_Solid_Version.zip = The solid version split into 6 pieces, each scaled to life-size and able to fit within the build-volume of a Replicator1. All the pieces are oriented such that none require external supports (or rafts). EinsteinShell2Parts.zip = The shell version split into two pieces. Both are oriented so that they shouldn't need external supports. Includes the mounting bracket. If you rescale these, make sure to scale all the parts by the exact same factor. (Don't use "fill build space") EinsteinSolid2Parts.zip = The shell version split into two pieces. Both are oriented so that they shouldn't need external supports. Includes a version of the lower half with the integrated base. If you rescale these, make sure to scale all the parts by the exact same factor. (Don't use "fill build space")