Originally shared by Frank Zottel
How to 3D Print human size sculpture in bronze with a Printrbot Metal Plus ???
Hi 3D Printer enthusiasts, we just finished on our school a real cool 3D print project on behalf an local artist.
The Story: A local artist specialised in casting bronze was contacting us in 2015, with a new challenge, if we could 3D print a human size sculpture for him ? He have a client who like to get a bronze statue of a dancing lady with her traditional Caribbean costume in a spinning move. Usually the artist orders a half tonne of clay, to be able to model everything by hand. But he remembered me saying ones that we do 3D printing on our school and so he contacted me and the project began. My first though was, how we could print that big ? As we are specialised in designing and 3D printing jewellery, means as smaller as better and more resolution, but now this client wants exactly the opposite ? Well there was only one option, printing it in parts… Then I start researching what kind of printer could handle that amount of 3D printed work, as this printer have to run day and night almost non stop for round about one month ? The second challenge was, schools always complains about budget and so we too.
As I’m following this community a long time, I always read about @Brook_Drumm and the Printrbot and how reliable the printers are. So I was contacting Brook and told him from our crazy idea, his answer was clear = "My advice is to jump in and work through the issues. Nothing like becoming the only expert in the world by blazing the trail! " At least one thing was clear at that time, we both though the same ! Then we purchased our “Printrbot Metal Plus” Brook and his team gave us great advise how to modify the 3D printer with a new hotend and bunch of 1mm nozzles, as well a gear head extruder upgrade. His team was already running test, how to print best with a 1mm nozzle on Cura. So they supported us also with a perfect Cura profile and the best settings to start with.
In the meantime while we was awaiting the delivery of the 3D printer, we develop a step by step project plan with the bronze artist. So he arranged a date with us and a lady from an folklore dancing group in her costume. Now we could start 3D scanning her via PrimeSense Carmine 1.09 and SKANECT software (licensed version) and parallel we did a photo shooting with about 70 photos around the lady, where each photo had 60% overlapping, to be able to stitch them together via Autodesk 123D Catch. Then we used all kind of CAD software to prepare and clean up the final 3D scanned data, using FireStorm CAD / Meshmixer and Rhino. To scale it and slice it in equal cubes, to be able to print with our Pritrbot Metal Plus build volume of X-Y-Z: 250mm x 250mm x 265mm (apx 10″ x 10″ x 10″) After the printer arrived, we printed out smaller test versions to see how to adjust for the final size.
Then we start delivering the first batch of printed parts and “hard labour” starts ! Removing all the support from the prints then using a soldering iron welding all PLA parts together and what you can see on the photos, instead of sanding the artist filled all imperfections as well 3D printed layers up with beeswax. Cut off some body parts and shift them in a better passion etc. Then finally artist was using the 3D printed parts for making a plaster of Paris mold. This way he was able to decide which body parts he will separate, as his melting crucible capacity is only about 12kg per cast. After the lost wax casting was done, he welded everything together to one final statue as you can see on the photos.
It was a great experience and most awesomest 3D print “in size” I was involved in my teachers CAD/CAM career 
As I don’t sell story’s ha ha ha… if you look trough the photos you can see the one where the 3D printed lady starts to get a darker face, as she gets build up with wax on top of PLA (bigger lips and different nose). Great artist work (not 3D printed) depends the artist wants to have her looking more Caribbean and not looking digital. If you look even more, you can see a lot more changes too !