Ancient Chinese Dagger Is Priceless

Situation
Collectors of ancient artifacts know that while rare and sometimes extremely valuable, the preservation and maintenance of relics of the past is of the upmost importance. While restoration of such antiquities can extend their life, the chemical reactions taking place within their ancient materials mean that decay and deterioration is unavoidable.

Priceless Past, a distributor and service provider of ancient artifacts, had acquired a Bronze dagger dating back to the 5th century BCE from the Qiang minority in ancient China. As one of the most rare and fragile artifacts in their collection, Priceless Past sought to preserve a digital copy of the 27 cm dagger in explicit detail. Not content with archiving the dagger based on drawings and photographs that were currently available, Priceless Past needed a solution to acquire surface detail without risking damage via contact with the part.

3DScanCo has proved to us that they have a true commitment to delivering the highest quality work.”

Solution
Priceless Past entrusted 3DScanCo -a division of Laser Design Inc. – to perform non-contact 3D laser scanning on the dagger at 3DScanCo’s engineering service center. 3DScanCo used the Konica Minolta VIVID 9i to perform high resolution 3D laser scans of the dagger, capturing the extremely fine markings and details.

The VIVID 9i was ideal due to its ability to scan at very high detail without the use of probes; a completely non-contact scanning process. The raw scan data was imported into Rapidform XOS software to register and merge the dagger into a .STL polymesh file format which can be used for rapid prototyping and visualization.

Results
The resulting scan data provided by 3DScanCo accurately matched the shape and distinguishing features of the ancient dagger. For Priceless Past, this meant a whole new way to preserve, archive and display the dagger to historians and collectors alike. Furthermore, digital models of valuable artifacts offer the ability to track quantifiable changes in size and details due to decay or restoration and cleaning. Priceless Past continues to work with 3DScanCo, trusting in their ability to provide the highest quality and safest 3D scanning services.