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The heart of the “Cyberglobe Culture” is the camera, which moves from top to bottom, and the 0.1 millimeter thick slide, which rotates on its own axis. © CLAUSS
The Bad Nauheim-based company Microbox has launched a scanner that is a milestone in 3D technology.
Let’s assume we work in a museum and want to digitize an old vase so that anyone who is interested in the piece can look at it from all sides at home. After all, even in the cultural sector, you have to keep up with the times. But how do we do that? If we place the vase on a table, we cannot photograph it from below. If the table has a glass top, the glass reflects. If we hold the vase in our hand, our hand is in the way.
250 images for one scan
Microbox GmbH from Bad Nauheim has now brought the solution to market, which managing director Stephan Welp describes as a “game changer in the world of culture”. “Cyberglobe Culture” is the name of the 3D scanner that Microbox is using in particular for museums. Objects measuring up to 43x43x43 centimeters and weighing up to 20 kilograms can be digitized with the “Cyberglobe Culture” seamlessly, in great detail and without casting shadows.
A 3D scanner in itself is nothing new, says Welp. However, the results so far have not been satisfactory. Either you have to go around the object with a hand scanner, but you don’t have any defined positions to the object. This means that you simply can’t always keep the exact same distance with your bare hand, which leads to distortions. Or you have the scenario described at the beginning. “Then at some point you have to hold the object in your hand. You never get the position as accurate as it was originally,” explains Welp.
So how does the “Cyberglobe Culture” work? The object – let’s use the vase as an example – is placed on a slide that is only 0.1 millimeters thick but is nevertheless stable. This slide rotates on its own axis – in coordination with an 80-megapixel camera. This in turn moves in a semicircle from top to bottom, stopping again and again, and takes 250 pictures from all perspectives for one scan. The pictures from below also turn out perfectly, because no light is refracted due to the transparent slide.
Efficiency saves time and money
The software combines the individual images into a larger whole, so that at the end of the process you have a 3D image that looks like the original. Four LED lights and a milky reflector ensure the correct lighting, achieving optimal light distribution.
Anyone who operates the “Cyberglobe Culture” simply needs to place the vase or whatever on the slide, press a button and let the device do the rest. In the meantime, you can drink a coffee or do something else.
Microbox boss Welp points to the efficiency of the work process, after all, not every museum is blessed with IT experts, and the short time commitment frees up space for other tasks. Ultimately, time is money, and so Welp also highlights the financial aspect, which plays a not insignificant role in the cultural sector.
According to Welp, four digital copies, i.e. fully calculated and assembled 3D images, can be created within an hour. Incidentally, the whole thing works not only with inflexible things like a vase, but also with a medal on a ribbon, for example. It would be impossible to lay it down exactly the same way twice in a row. With “Cyberglobe Culture” you only have to lay it down once and it is captured from all sides.
Products in demand worldwide
Microbox GmbH in Bad Nauheim, founded in 1958 by Dr. Ulrich Welp, the father of the current managing director Stephan Welp, develops scanning systems that are used to digitize cultural assets worldwide. Last year, the company was named “Hesse Champion” in the world market leader category. Nine of the ten largest libraries on the planet use high-performance scanners from Microbox. These are marketed under the brand name “book2net,” which expresses what the devices do: They digitize books, documents, and drawings true to the original. Depending on the device, the paper itself can also be analyzed; you can make faded writing visible again without any personal effort, carry out art-historical material analyses, find out whether anyone has already restored the old pages, and so on.
All of this information is relevant for science and restorers. In particular, Microbox devices make it possible for pages to be made available to the public digitally and true to the original. One important example, which this newspaper reported on in March, was the “Cobra” scanner, which was used to digitize Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, around 1450, page by page, in order to present them to the public on a platform at the University of Mainz and later on the website of the Johannes Gutenberg Museum. With the introduction of “Cyberglobe Culture,” the Bad Nauheim-based company Microbox took the step into 3D technology this year.
