University of Sheffield AMRC supports major restoration project with 3D scanning

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The University of Sheffield AMRC, in partnership with PES Scanning, has supported a major restoration project at Wentworth Woodhouse that will help preserve its 18th century Germanicus statue for generations to come, as well as opening up new ways to raise funds for the stately home.

Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, is one of the longest and grandest stately homes in the UK, and is run by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust.

The centuries-old Germanicus statue has cultural significance and value to the home, as it was commissioned by the Second Marquess of Rockingham in the 1750s and created by the same artist who made sculptures for the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

The Trust has embarked on a project to repair and preserve the Germanicus, using reverse engineering technology to create a highly-accurate digital blueprint of the statue. This is so it can be recreated if it ever were to get seriously damaged, and to explore creating miniature replicas that can be sold to raise funds for the large-scale restoration of the home.

To do this, the Trust collaborated with PES Scanning and the AMRC, a member of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult network. PES Scanning was responsible for 3D scanning Germanicus and optimising the digital ‘point cloud’ model that was created of the statue.

A handheld 3D laser scanner was used to capture the detail of the statue to an accuracy of 0.020 mm and resolution capability of 0.01 mm. The scanner works by projecting lines of laser light onto the surface of the statue while two sensor cameras continuously record the changing distance and shape of the laser lines in three dimensions as it sweeps over the statue, taking up to 1.6 million measurements per second.

Once the individual measurement points are captured, specialist software meshes the points into surfaces. The meshing process calculates how the points relate to each other in order to join them together into surfaces.

These joined up points are called point clouds, which once created can be loaded into CAD platforms to enable items to be used in multiple ways, such as being redrawn for reverse engineering or design optimisation, as well as being used for 3D printing.

“PES Scanning provides metrology and 3D scanning services for a range of different industries from aerospace to construction. We’re using data capturing technology to address the heritage challenges of today from restoration to preservation. The technology allows us to visualise how these items or buildings were back when they were originally built and it helps us restore them if needed to their former glory,” said Nathan Bailey, Metrology Applications Engineer at PES Scanning.

Bailey added: “As a company that is constantly looking to expand the horizons and the areas that we work in, this project with the AMRC and Wentworth Woodhouse is a fantastic opportunity and we were very excited to be a part of it.”

The AMRC’s design experts then used the scans to 3D print three miniature replicas, which weigh 348 grams and stand 29 cm tall. 

Suzanna Mitchell, Project Manager at the AMRC said: “The replicas were manufactured using our Photocentric LC Magna 3D printer, which is capable of creating large, high-detail, low-cost parts. This polymer AM technology uses and LCD Mask approach to fully expose each print layer instantly, allowing us to produce three statues in 31 hours.

University of Sheffield AMRC Training Centre apprentice Harry Howson, who works for PES Scanning, helped to digitise the statue. Bailey of PES said: “This project was a fantastic and exciting opportunity for our apprentice, Harry, to really get his teeth stuck into the world of 3D scanning and metrology and within a project that’s quite interesting and outside of the usual traditional engineering situations that we see.”

Dr Phil Yates, SME Senior Engineer at AMRC integrated manufacturing group said: “Technology today is developing rapidly and it has the potential to not only make a better tomorrow but also to preserve, conserve, and restore the past. Using the technology at the AMRC and PES Scanning to create a model of the Germanicus staute is the first step towards this. And we hope to use our technical expertise for many such avenues, and continue our collaboration with The Trust.”