Creating replicas of antique medals for the Russian Cultural Foundation

Our partner, 3Dtool, participated in the preparation of exhibits for the Rare Gift exhibition, organized by the Russian Cultural Foundation. Especially for the exhibition, they produced precise 3D-printed replicas of rare medals returned to Russia from foreign collections.

The exhibition "A rare gift. Stories of the return of cultural treasures from the collection of the Russian Cultural Foundation" was held in 2024 in three Russian cities: St. Petersburg, Pyatigorsk and Rostov-on-Don. It was visited by more than 48 thousand people.
According to cultural experts, it has become a good example of a competent and thoughtful approach to the inclusive design of exhibition spaces in accordance with current methods and tools for expanding cultural accessibility and creating projects adapted for visitors with different experiences.

The route of visiting the exhibition implied versatility and different types of interaction with it: exhibits that can be touched, sound accompaniment and typhot commentary, Braille, convenience for people of different heights and builds, right-handed and left-handed.

The Rare Gift exhibition space consists of ten thematic sections. The exhibition includes reproductions of works by Aivazovsky, Repin and Levitsky, exhibits from the 1924 Russian Exhibition in America, archives and newsreels, replicas of objects belonging to famous people.

Replicas of four antique medals from the collection of the museum of the American society "Rodina", created by Russian emigrants in 1954 in Lakewood, New Jersey, were also on display. Their exact enlarged copies were displayed on the stand as tactile exhibits.

• The tactile collection includes:
• medal "For the accession of Peter the Great to the throne", made by engravers Yudin and Vechter;
• medal "In memory of the Twenty-five years of work of the Imperial Moscow Society of Agriculture", created by engravers Klepikov and Utkin in 1845;
• table medal "In memory of the birth of Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich", cast from a bronze alloy under Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in 1759 in honor of the birth of Peter I.;
• The beard badge of 1705 is a kind of "receipt" for the payment of a tax on wearing a beard.

Reproduction of the replicas included several stages:

• 3D scanning of the original medals;
• scaling 3D models;
• 3D printing of enlarged replicas;
• artistic processing of plastic medals.

3Dtool specialists used a high-precision 3D metrological scanner RangeVision PRO II to scan the original exhibits. The medals were carefully placed on an automatic turntable and scanned from both sides, and then the scans were combined in RV 3D Studio.

Optical 3D scanners are not always able to digitize dark and shiny surfaces, so objects are usually coated with a special matting spray before scanning. But it is strictly forbidden to put any substances on antique medals — you can’t even touch them with your bare hands. Therefore, all hope was for a powerful blue light projector, which is equipped with a 3D scanner PRO II.

The scanner did an excellent job of digitizing the medals, transferring the smallest details of the exhibits.

After digitization, the 3D models were cleaned of noise and artifacts and scaled. For example, the size of the smallest exhibit, the Beard Sign, is only 23 mm in diameter in the original, but all replicas have been increased to 90 millimeters to make them easier to view and, if necessary, even explore by touch.

All seven replicas were printed with photopolymer resins on high-precision 3D printers using LCD mask stereolithography technology. To speed up the process, several additive systems were used at once — 3DiY Rex 6K, Anycubic Photon Mono X 6K, Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra and Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K S. The consumable material was the photopolymer Elegoo Standard Resin 8K.

Polymer models reproduce geometry exactly and are great for tactile study — but only tactile. To make the printed medals look as much like the originals as possible, they were sent for artistic revision to specialists who reproduced all the shades of the original metal texture, including scratches and traces of corrosion.

Thanks to 3D scanning and 3D printing, visitors to the Russian Gift exhibition were able not only to see, but also to touch the unique rarities, the originals of which are hidden under the glass of the showcase. And a fairly typical and understandable task for a 3D scanner — the replication of museum exhibits — has acquired a new meaning, becoming part of a big idea to create a new inclusive exhibition space.

The original article on the 3Dtool website

Do you have similar non-standard complex tasks? Our scanners and specialists will be happy to participate in cool projects. Write to us and we will discuss cooperation.