3D Printing for Cultural Heritage: Preservation, Accessibility, Research and Education

Additive manufacturing, if seconded by a paradigm change to the museum model, can be employed in many ways to reintegrate touch, and other non-retinal senses into our cultural experiences. These multi-sensorial forms of experiencing culture also have a great benefit for the accessibility of cultural heritage, especially for persons with learning difficulties, for children, the elderly, for blind or visually impaired visitors. 3D Printing is in a phase of rapid technological changes and promises more enhancing experiences for the field of cultural heritage. This would provide a more holistic appreciation of the produced objects, but make it necessary to develop basic guidelines for 3D printed models. We expect that 3D Printing will not only become vital in the field of reconstruction of objects, but also for research, documentation, preservation and educational purposes, and it has the potential to serve these purposes in an accessible and all-inclusive way.