How do you remember winning a trophy which you can only hold for less than a year… 3d scan it of course! That’s exactly what Ivan Jones did, having won the Mike Small trophy at the Serpentine Swimming Club.
Ivan approached Printing Portal with the ambition to fully scan the 170mm tall trophy to possibly 3d print a miniature in the future. The scan needed to be a show the unique geometry of the trophy (more about that later) as well as be a completely closed mesh, ready for 3d printing. For Ivan, there was no need to have a completely reverse engineered part – which is a more arduous process but provide CAD modelled features, such as super smooth surfaces and perfectly curved edges.
So why is this cup so unique? As we mentioned earlier the geometry for this cup is slightly different. One handle is incomplete and the base is missing some detail, leaving the whole cup at a slant. Bad scanning? Not at all! This cup is specially named the Mike Small cup due to an injury its namesake suffered in a car crash. Mike’s humor was certainly one of a kind as he instructed that the trophy should have a missing handle and wonky base – in accordance to the arm and leg damage he suffered in the crash.
This story alone was interesting enough for us to take on by immortalising the trophy using 3d scanning. Once we provided to Ivan, he finished by adding a metallic texture, similar to the real cup, and uploading to sketchfab.
Once again, congratulations to Ivan for his big swimming win – and for providing this fantastic story for the Swimming Club!