Oh Gosh, Thank you Morning Star, Its looking like a bigger job than l am prepared to take on. Lts not just the thousands of pounds that makes me feel faint...l am very much Cave Woman. My house is coal and wood fired, my start in life as an engraver and clay sculpter also puts me comfotably in the realms of antiquity,   l can make components,  but electricity is so modern its still very much magic, in a Catweasel way........l dont want to waste peoples time. It would seem from what you say its all a bit over and beyond.

You may however know of someone who can help with the alphabet.

The story so far......l invented and new type face, sending the finnished item off to Leteraset and momo type, the reply came back, yes original, but unreadable...No one yet, that l have come across has been unable to read it, once given the formula. Braille is wonderful and has been in use for 100 years, but not many can read it. Poison bottles once the label has fallen off is always readable if you can use Braille, wouldn't it be a good idea if sighted people could read it too...l have made a key board with my raised type face on it, but get no reply from the blind associations. Tell a lie-- the Royal London Blind association did reply, he thought it was a great idea and told me to get in touch with Peter White at the BBC. this l did, about 2 years ago.... A passing Westlands Helicopter computer programmer said it looked like a computer program, and that it could be a space saving thing, he also thought it would be better than bar-code....again space saving and readable. All this kind of thing has moved on now, so l think it has possibly become out of date before it has even been born.......Would love to know your thoughts on this.

Thanks for your time

Yve

Hi thanks for your reply, l am now better informed. I love the plaster possibility, its one of my favourite mediums, and would look wonderful with a light inside, the birds and flowers are carved they would appear more 3d, giving it a delicate charm.

However the major problem is that the scanner will not make a clear copy, distorting.......not coping with the undercuts and holes.

I have considered filling the carved out areas with a temporary plug, but so far no one has talked to me, I have just been told ,cant do it,...so any help or suggestion are gratefully accepted.

Yve*

There are expensive systems to get the resolution you're after, they exist for film and TV, but they need an expert to get a clean scan. How do you feel about modelling directly in the computer? The problem you're facing is that to copy a real-world model using a printer will involve some modelling either way, it's the trade-off between moulded and mouldless casting, the computer model assumes the role of mould.

There's also a whole lot of hacking gone into Kinect, but I'm not sure of the quality you'd get, and its a set of tools that integrate with MatLab and Python, not recommended for beginners.

To be honest, taking a silicone mould off the original is probably the only way of replicating that exactly, without an awful lot of hardware software and experience that most people you encounter wont have. But cant? Thats not a word I'm used to using.

We're a maker community, a collective of people with a can-do attitude and a screwdriver who dont let others tell us whats possible; If nobody can, we do it ourselves or at least help each other try... Grab yourself a screwdriver, there are many who can teach you the rest.

3D printers are not expensive, its the box they come in that costs most of the money. You'll need to buy 4 or 5 stepper motors and a controller board, usually an Arduino variant, some toothed belts and pulleys, some threaded rod and plywood, Vinyl, wire, screws, glue and some basic tools. Add to this free software to design and transmit the mould to the powder and you are there, estimated cost a few hundred at most. Compared to anything up to several thousand to buy...

Hi Yve, welcome to Hackaday and thank you for following my adventures!

Always nice to see arts and crafts, most here are engineers. You came to the right place to find a solution, thats for sure.

3D printers come in several flavours, and while even an expensive 3D colour plastics printer would struggle to reproduce your sculpture there are others that print by solidifying powders like cement and plaster that could. Not in colour however, it would require painting... There is also an ancient system that spawned the powder printers that prints using sugar powder melted with a laser, that would also be capable.

The difference is that powder printers build up a solid block of powder with the piece embedded in it, so can handle overhangs, spurs, arches and other geometry that requires scaffolding built into a plastic print to overcome. Not all things can be scaffolded and there comes a point between cleaning a sculpture and crafting one from a rough blank, which a scaffolded print is closer to. The finished piece takes a lot of cleaning up. Powder prints just need dusting and they are finished, its mouldless plastercasting.

Good luck! :-)