Progress on the Process (and Very Fast Paced Progress at That)

I feel like I’ve gotten whiplash from the differences of pace between my last entry and this one. I felt like I was trying to eat sand when it came to writing eight new pages and organizing and finalizing the project aspect of my thesis. I somehow, miraculously, managed to write eight new pages almost entirely on the process of the many decisions that went into the project aspect of my thesis. Who knew there were so many factors in choosing a letter or a font to work with?

Compared to the slow crawl of gathering materials and information to write eight pages last week, I am absolutely overwhelmed by a whirlwind of progress. I feel like I have done so much and the first round of creation will be completed soon, which is absolutely amazing, by the way. I’ve also learned so much during the process of creation. This past week, I’ve been focusing on 3D scanning the physical typefaces I want to recreate. You would think that scanning four letters would be a pretty simple process, right?

There are a lot of nuances that I didn’t even consider when it comes to 3D scanning. The scanner operates off of two cameras that focus on the object. Lasers then triangulate information based on the location of the camera and the object. Each object needs to be scanned from multiple angles in order to have a full, detailed render. Each individual scan takes about three minutes. Needless to say, I spent about two hours scanning each letter from multiple angles. Sometimes, the same angle would be scanned before there was a high quality image that could be worked with. When working with the third and fourth typefaces, the scanner did not want to pick up on the letterface, and there were large portions of data missing. I think with the third typeface, there were a lot of issues with exposure. Typeface are incredibly dark from decades upon decades of ink, and the background for the scanning was a dark table. The fourth typeface would not scan because of the above reason but also because it was such a glossy letter. The lasers used for 3D scanning need to be able to “grab onto” the surface of the object to record data points. A glossy object will reflect the lasers, and it can cause large gaps of data in the image. 

Scanning typeface involved placing the letter on a small pedestal within view of the two cameras on the actual scanner. I would select a part of the image for a detailed scan from the preview given to me by the cameras. As the scan completed, I could see the parts of the image that were fully captured as well as what data was missing. 

In the end, the inability to gather nice scans of the third and fourth typeface is not a large issue that makes or breaks the project. There are other ways to go about making a facsimile than 3D scanning. What this means is that I can’t 3D print those two typefaces. I will still be able to create facsimiles of all four letters through other means. I just need to scan and create vector files for the four type I am looking at. Once that’s done, I just need to find some time to head on over to The Construct, the maker space on campus, and do some routing and laser engraving to get some facsimile typefaces made.

This is what the one of the scans of the fourth typeface looked like. All of the white areas are areas on the letter that were too glossy for the laser to register any information.