I do not know anything about 3D printing, let me know if another place might be more appropriate for this post.
My friend about three months ago was in a catastrophic motorcycle accident. He was hit by a texting F150 truck driver. He lost his leg, an eye and has had pretty much full body reconstruction, including jaw and face. He was wondering if he could 3D scan in the helmet he was wearing with all the first responders/doctors (who helped save him that night) signatures then give each one a copy to thank them. He is in Ontario/Brampton area. He can pay for it.
Picture is not of actual helmet. Being sent down from up north right now.
I used to work for a company that would have been your best chance to get this done, but the business didn't survive the pandemic.
3D scanning is perfectly plausible; hell it's not that difficult to rig up an old Kinect (from an Xbox) to do it. Bespoke 3D scanners can get expensive but you can probably find someone to do it. Some 3D scanners will only catch the shape of an object, some can do color as well. The tool I would want to use for this is a structured light scanner, like an Artec Eva.
Most 3D printers would be up to the task of making a little helmet shaped object, but not get the color, especially the signatures. Common FDM or SLA machines aren't up to that task. The only tech I know of that'll get you a full color 3D print with the signatures and such will be a color SLS machine.
Selective Laser Sintering is a process where a thin layer of fine plastic powder is laid down, and then a laser shoots the plastic to melt some of the grains together to form a solid object. If you hear about 3D printed metal, this is how that process is done, just hotter. Some SLS machines can also either spray ink or drop colored powder in order to form a more or less full color model. These machines aren't user friendly, so you're really only going to find them in professional settings. We didn't even have one, so when we used one we contracted with a service that had them.
Back when I was working for this company, I would have done the 3D scan and the prep work to turn the raw model into a printable model in-house, and then sent the file out to the fab shop. I'd expect this to run at least a thousand dollars maybe more. And I don't know who I'd send you to these days, especially not in Canada.
Thank you. Gives him a starting point. He won’t even be out of the hospital for another month or 2 IMO. Going to look for local place that may do it.