3D scanning frequently takes us to amazing
places to document incredible things. We're pretty passionate about recording the world in 3D and we'll often offer our scanning services when we see an interesting or important chance to document historical artifacts or to help someone. Some recent examples are sending a technician out to Alaska to digitize rare Inuit tribal masks as well as recently scanning an amputee to help create a robotic arm. Our location in Baltimore also frequently presents opportunities to scan important items and structures related to our nation's history.
Having learned from the local news about a major maintenance project
underway for the famous USS Constellation and her equally historic
cousin, the submarine USS Torsk, Direct Dimensions’ president Michael
Raphael contacted the organizers and offered assistance with our 3D
technologies. Why? Because it is interesting, because we can, and
because we should gather as much 3D data as possible while these important artifacts exist.
The USS Constellation frigate was commissioned by the US Navy in 1855 and remained active for just over 100 years. During her active lifetime, she captured slave ships, carried famine relief supplies to Ireland, shuttled exhibits to France for the Exhibition of 1878, and served as a training vessel for sailors during World War I.
As the last remaining naval vessel afloat from the Civil War era, the USS Constellation was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1963 and moved to her permanent home docked in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The ship is open daily for visits.The USS Torsk, meanwhile, is normally docked a pier over, and was launched in 1944 and decommissioned in 1968. Her claim to fame is that on August 14, 1945, she torpedoed and sunk the last enemy ship of World War II.
We were honored to help the Historic Ships in Baltimore organization with our newest and most advanced 3D scanning tools while the two ships were in drydock for repairs. While the organization was unfamiliar with the 3D technologies offered, they were blown away by the initial scan data and excited about the possibilities!
Using the powerful combination of the FARO Photon laser scanner and
the Surphaser HSX_IR laser scanner from Basis Software, Direct
Dimensions' engineers Glenn Woodburn and Dan Haga captured huge areas of
the historic ship hull surfaces in the form of millions of 3D data
points. The 3D laser scanning process resembles the more traditional
surveying process, which uses optical scopes to measure a distant
target; except these scanners can make an incredibly dense 3D point cloud of
the entire scene in just minutes. The Photon unit captures at a longer
range while the Surphaser data is incredibly accurate with extremely
high resolution. The combination of these two technologies provided a unique set of
3D scans allowing different types of analysis.
Between both scanners it took only fifty scans, each only about 10 minutes long, and both ships were fully captured. Following the onsite scanning, the engineers used PolyWorks software
to rapidly align and merge the multiple 'point clouds' into a single
coordinated file of each ship hull.
The final fully merged point cloud of the ships can be used in
numerous ways. This essentially raw data can be used directly to obtain
complex 3D measurements for any future maintenance or research. It could
also be utilized to create a 3D walkthrough for educational purposes or
an online museum version of the ship, and can even be used to create
scaled versions of the ship which could be sold as souvenirs.It is amazing how quickly we can now digitally document these massive historic structures, artifacts and monuments. Even if there is no immediate end use in mind for the data, it is important to create a digital historic record for the potential needs of future generations.
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