“Het Zwin” is a famous nature reserve in the region of West Flanders in Belgium. All year round, thousands of birds flock to the Zwin, making the site a real airport for birds as they pass through during their migration, hunt for food or hatch their eggs. The Zwin opens its new visitors’ center on the 10th of June, and anticipation is high as the center expects 200.000 visitors to attend throughout the year. For support with the concept of the exhibition at the center, they turned to Materialise for help with an instructive bird display!
The team at the Zwin wanted more than just a visitors’ center for the reserve – they wanted visitors to be able to engage in an interactive learning experience about the lives and habitat of these birds, with a particular focus on migratory bird species. Madoc, an organization part of the design team in charge of the exposition, knew that for visitors to really get the most out of the experience, signs and text would not be enough. Visitors needed a way to get up close and personal with the birds themselves – without endangering the real birds who flock to the Zwin every year.
That’s when Madoc turned to Materialise! They came to us with a unique request; they needed twenty diverse bird models, ten of which would represent a bird species in flight and ten on the ground. They would be used in the five different sections of the exhibition to illustrate each phase of the migration (from preparing for the journey all the way to arriving at the destination and procreating). We gladly accepted the challenge, and worked closely together with the avian experts from the Zwin to create the models. Every bird needed to be an exact copy of its real kind, down to the shape of its beak and the details on its feathers. The challenge was getting the details right, and managing the enormous STL files! The Materialise Build Processor came in handy to slice up the files into extremely thin layers, so our printers could manage the load.
Finally, once the birds were printed in white polyamide, our production team got to work cleaning them up and coating them with a protective layer. They were then shipped off to the Zwin, and we got to see them displayed in their full glory at the launch of the visitor center. Hopefully they will be able to teach many future visitors about the fascinating and rare birds that fly to the Zwin every year.
If you can’t get enough of 3D-printed birds, why not check out our blog post on Robirds? Or if you also have a project that could use 3D Printing, get in touch!