09/25/2026
Most of the PMMA we print is made to be destroyed.
In investment casting, the pattern exists to disappear: print the pattern, create the shell, burn it out, pour the metal.
This one didn’t.
When the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution needed life-size replicas of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit for its Apollo at the Park program, the original was far too fragile to travel to 15 ballparks. So it was 3D scanned instead - down to the stitching in the fabric.
Turning that scan into something physical took a 1:1 print. The model was split into segments and printed in PMMA on a VX1000, then refined, moulded, cast in resin and hand-painted before the statues went out across the country.
Same material. Same machine. A completely different job.
That’s what rarely shows up on a spec sheet: PMMA holds fine detail so faithfully that it works just as well as a master pattern for moulding as it does as a burn-out pattern for casting. Fabric weave, folds, wear marks - what the scanner captured, the print gave back.
Watch the entire process, from scan to final paint in this Adam Savage’s Tested episode:
https://youtu.be/sNeou5p5f5s?is=nQgySTObVhQz5N3H
