PRESERVING THE CRADLE OF CIVILISATION

PRESERVING THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION

Head of Content Laura Griffiths speaks to filmmaker Ivan Erhel about using 3D scanning to digitise the past.

Save what could not be saved.”

That was the mission French filmmaker Ivan Erhel appointed himself when he decided to travel from the South to the North of Iraq in a race to preserve what remains of the history of Mesopotamia, often referred to as the Cradle of Civilization.

That urgency is no exaggeration. With ISIS occupying over 30% of the country at the time, destroying museums and statues in the process, Erhel recalled in a conversation with TCT how, after seeing a video showing the destruction of a museum in Mosul - countless relics and history lost in the process - he felt compelled to do something, anything, to help save what was left of the world’s oldest civilisation. A conversation with a friend who had just purchased an Artec Eva 3D scanner sparked an idea.

“He said, ‘If I were there sometime before ISIS, we could have saved it,’ and I thought that was really a great idea, so I decided to make a film about it.”

The film centres on the journey of an Iraqi writer who, after three decades living in France, returns to Iraq to help preserve its history using 3D scanning. Prior to this project, Erhel had never used a 3D scanner and now left coordinating the project on his own with the support of 3D scanning specialist Artec 3D, set out with a Space Spider and an Eva scanner in tow.

The destruction of the Mosul Museum and Nimrud, once a major ancient city 20 miles south of the city of Mosul, were the starting points for the project. The first piece to be scanned was the Processional Way of Babylon, a 250-metre-long brick road 120 km south of Baghdad, featuring carvings of various animals and legendary creatures, much of which had already been destroyed by erosion. For larger pieces like this, a handheld Eva was propped up on a stick to reach harder to access areas while the blue light Space Spider was put to work capturing intricate details on smaller objects using a turntable. The team also scanned people, including soldiers who initially questioned Erhel’s intentions with the technology (“It looked like a spy thing!” Erhel said) but after the project was explained to them, agreed to be scanned and are now featured in the film.

On top of logistical challenges around securing a visa and permissions to film, Erhel’s bid to capture as many monuments and artefacts as possible posed very real risk with the sounds of gunshots and further destruction never too far behind. For many of the sites, Erhel and his small team were the first to arrive and without the luxury of spending weeks scanning some of the larger monuments, including one that measured

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THE EVA WAS USED TO SCAN LARGER PIECES

Large-Scale Additive Manufacturing Touches Down at Formnext 2021 – Massivit 3D

Formnext 2021 is shaping up to be one of the most talked-about industry events in quite some time. One of the hot topics that will be discussed and scrutinized is how to attain the Holy Grail of additive manufacturing: speed and size.

As AM technologies are adopted more pervasively into real-world manufacturing arenas, industries such as marine, aeronautics, and land-based transportation benefit from factors such as weight savings, structural integrity, and geometry freedom. However, inherent limitations in production speed and size remain unresolved.

One company whose participation at Formnext is already garnering significant industry buzz is Massivit 3D - pioneers in large-scale 3D printing. Massivit 3D was born of a vision to resolve recognized limitations in production speed and size in the field of additive manufacturing. The company’s Webinars in last year’s Formnext Connect online event spurred a lot of interest from virtual attendees around the globe.

The Massivit 3D stand - C119, Hall 12.1 – will showcase a wide range of applications, from full-scale printed railway spare parts to automotive wide body kits and custom furniture – all to be 3D printed live throughout the course of the event.

The company’s latest industrial-grade system, the Massivit 5000, was developed to serve the Industry 4.0 requirements of the Automotive, Marine, Rail, and Scenic Fabrication arenas. It enables full-scale end-use parts, prototypes, and molds to be produced with ultra-short lead times by leveraging advanced, thermoset photo polymer materials, dual printing heads, sophisticated slicing software, and cutting-edge computer vision features.

The Massivit 5000 boasts an exceptional build volume of 1450W x 1110D x 1800H mm and a printing speed up to 30x the speed of other AM systems on the market. It offers a range of printing materials, printing modes, and resolutions to accommodate particulate considerations of speed, strength, and scale. The system’s Dual Material System allows a different material to be printed simultaneously on each head.

Visitors to the stand will learn about Massivit 3D’s patented Gel Dispensing Printing (GDP) technology – the innovation behind the company’s portfolio of 3D printers – that has already empowered manufacturers and service bureaus across 40 countries to automate and expedite their workflows.

A European nautical engineering firm, Velum Nautica, has used their Massivit 3D printer to produce full-scale, tailored marine parts, shortening their production time from days or weeks down to a matter of hours (pictured top left). Velum Nautica has served its global clients with countless custom parts including a 1.2-meter foldable gangway and a bowsprit that doubles as a boarding ramp for a 30-passenger yacht – all printed in less than one day.

Designers and engineers are constantly turning to companies like Massivit 3D for digital solutions to challenges that previously fell in the purview of hand craftsmen, such as scenic fabricators. For example, a 4.23m replica of a classic Italian sports car (pictured below) was 3D printed and assembled in just four pieces by Colorzenith and Giò Forma (Milan) for La Scala using a Massivit 1800. For further information about large-scale 3D printing, please contact Massivit 3D here.

www.massivit3d.com

Top right image: Wide body kit by TJ Hunt, STREETHUNTER DESIGNS & BCT Entertainment.

“I believe this technology was in search of a purpose.”

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THE ARTEC 3D EVA HANDHELD SCANNER

up to 75 metres wide and 30 metres high, often had to capture what they could in a matter of hours.

“We had to be very careful,” Erhel said, describing the “tense” situation the team found itself in while determined to scan what was dubbed “Last Survivor of Nimrud.” “There was one sculpture standing, the last one and we scanned it with the [Artec] Eva.”

Some of the scans are available to view on SketchFab and Erhel has even brought a couple of those files back into the real world with 3D printing. He’s holding one - printed using a powder-based process - as we speak. Erhel caveats that he’s not too enthusiastic about the quality of printing compared to 3D models (“You can’t compare with the original,” he said) and he shared how there was some hesitation from officials about letting the crew scan some artefacts through fear they would produce copies. That said, he believes the support of Artec 3D afforded the team a lot of credibility and believes there is real value in what they set out to achieve.

“Any documentation is welcome,” Erhel said. “Even if it comes from me who was not a professional in 3D, was not a professional in archaeology, I was nothing. I think a 3D model is so much more accurate than photography, it has much more information and you can understand much more by looking at 3D models, you can easily look at it through all angles. When you look at a model of all sides, then you see things that you cannot see on a photograph.

“If we were there sometime before we'd still have a trace of what Nimrud was because all we have is our photography and that photography is incomplete. So [3D scanning] is a way to give eternity.”

The film has since been completed and is currently available to watch in France, but Erhel’s mission continues. Now, he’s in the process of setting up workshops across the country to teach young people of Iraq about 3D scanning technology in what he hopes will serve as inspiration to start a movement of preserving heritage.

“The country is divided and it's very different when you're from the South, from the North or from the centre,” Erhel explained, adding that he wants to create three workshops across these three distinct parts of the country, “So that they can work together on keeping this country together and scanning and sharing our common heritage because they are the guardians but this heritage belongs to all of us.”

For the technology itself, Erhel believes projects like his also show how 3D scanning can offer more meaningful value.

“I believe this technology was in search of a purpose, apart from [reverse] engineering, which is the obvious purpose,” Erhel offered. “But world heritage, human civilization, is a cause.”

The final and perhaps most enduring impact is the new light Erhel hopes his film and the scans taken along the way will place on Iraq. He wants viewers to recognise that the country is more than the images we see of war and destruction, it is the birthplace of much of human civilisation, where the foundations for language, architecture, agriculture and more were built thousands of years ago.

“I think that's a good way to promote this heritage and to remind the world that Iraq is not just a conflict zone, Iraq is the cradle of civilization,” Erhel concludes. “Western civilization, we have a debt, an important debt, towards Mesopotamia and to this country.”

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CAPTURING FINE DETAILS WITH THE EVA