Re: Sculpting digital dinosaurs

[pwillis@ozemail.com.au (Paul Willis)]

>       I assume the digital bone replicas are milled; the article
>doesn't say.  But I've often wondered if stereo lithography could be
>used for this purpose.  (Indeed, the article mentions SL being used
>to manufacture a 6" Buddha statue.)  Does anybody know what the
>state of the technology of SL is?  What kind of tolerances are
>achievable?  How expensive is it?  >

I am currently looking at doing some steriolithography of fossil mammal
skills from Riversleigh, Queensland and some other bits and pieces. The
original data is from CT scans and that is the limiting factor in the
resolution. The SL technique is accurate to .15mm but the fuzz CT images
reslve doen to about .5mm. However, I am not sure that dinosaur bones would
be appropriate. The construction vats tend to be small (bigg enouth to do a
human skull - just). The cost I have been quoted depends on the time taken
to construct the specimen, for a human skull about 8 to 12 hours which, at
$100AUS per hour, works out at $800 - $1200.

I must track down the article you mention which may give a better
resolution for scanning than the CT images we are using at the moment.

Cheers, Paul

pwillis@ozemail.com.au