3D Printing and cultural heritage

Digital Fabrication devices are able to create tangible reproductions starting from a 3D digital models. Although current 3D printing pipelines still suffer from several restrictions, accuracy in reproduction has reached an excellent level, enough to be useful in many different contexts. The manufacturing industry has been the main domain of 3D printing applications over the last decade. Digital fabrication techniques have also been demonstrated to be effective in many other contexts and Cultural Heritage is one of the new application contexts and is an ideal domain to test the flexibility and quality of this new technology. This survey overviews the various fabrication technologies, discussing their strengths, limitations, and costs. Various successful uses of 3D printing in the Cultural Heritage are reported. We review works that have attempted to extend fabrication technologies to deal with the specific issues peculiar to the Cultural Heritage field. Finally, we also propose areas for future research.