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GEOMAGIC AT WORK
Five years ago, a team from Texas Tech University's College of Architecture started scanning the 305-foot Statue of Liberty. The goal was to create detailed drawings that could be used to recreate the American icon if it were damaged. The terrorist attacks highlighted the need for such drawings but also delayed the project, said Glenn Hill, the college's associate dean of research.
This summer, the team was finally able to generate drawings -- with the help of Geomagic software.
The scans captured the statue as a picture of about 94 million points, each about one-quarter-inch apart -- like taking a pen and making dots all over the statue. Geomagic software connected the points, filling in the spaces to capture curves and crannies in a precise 3-D model.
THE WORLD OF MASS CUSTOMIZATION
The Internet allows speedy customization of many goods from your home computer. Here are a few examples:
* Hankering for a BMW? They are built to order, including the snazzy Z4 Roadsters made at the South Carolina plant. Check out the possibilities at bmwusa.com/vehicles/byo--landing.
* Timbuk2's online "bag builder" lets you choose colors, accessories, sizes and more for its trendy totes. See it at timbuk2.com/tb2/retail/bagbuilder.htm.
* Choose from among a touted 4,221 possible Steve Madden shoe design combos at stevemadden.com.
* Got a short, sweet message for someone? You can design M&Ms with a personal message in your choice of 17 colors. www2.mms.com/us/index.jsp.
MAKING TOYS, CROWNS AND ARTIFICIAL HEARTS
Geomagic works with customers from dentists and doctors to industrial part makers and artists.
With braided hair, simple clothing and bare head and arms, a new Virgin Mary statue, above, varies from the traditional, as did the methods used to create it. The work of sculptor Robert Graham, the finished statue is eight feet tall and weighs 1,000 pounds. Geomagic's technology created a computer model that was used to cast the statue, which presides over the doorway of the newly dedicated Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
Here are other examples of ways Geomagic's technology is being used, from the company's Web site:
* Designing Fisher-Price toys and making replacement molds.
* Archaeologists are studying ancient manufacturing techniques with reconstructed Italian terra cotta plaques.
* Custom-fitting dental products such as braces and crowns.
* Helping Cleveland Clinic researchers design an artificial heart.
* The software also makes it easier to produce custom-fit goods such as suits, engine parts and hearing aids.
For more information see geomagic.com/en/.
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"Customers are no longer willing to accept the standard, off-the-rack offering," said Pine, co-founder of Strategic Horizons in Minnesota.Custom manufacturing likely will never match the costs and efficiency of mass-production on the factory floor. Making 10,000 identical widgets will almost certainly remain faster than making 10,000 with variations.But Geomagic software can help speed customizing, as it did with Richard Childress Racing. The technology cuts the measuring and calculating time for products that have many intricate, variable measurements, such as dental crowns and men's suits. Companies also could save substantially by reducing inventory, making just the goods that customers want and avoiding mounds of stuff that is eventually sold at heavy discounts.Those savings could offset the higher wages that make the United States vulnerable to low-wage countries. Pine, Fu and others speculate that could entice jobs back to local manufacturing."One part of our passion is the power to bring the manufacturing back," Fu said.That was Jud Early's mission in 1991 when he joined TC2, a nonprofit textile and apparel consortium. One of the group's goals was to use customization and automation to save apparel jobs. That failed, but the group's body scanners -- using Geomagic software -- are slowly catching on with makers of custom suits and retailers.Customization can be great for consumers and for generating profitable new businesses, said Early, the group's chief technology officer. However, "it is not a huge job saver," he said.For Childress Racing, Geomagic is part of the quest to win on the track. Last year, the software generated a pattern that enabled the company to replicate one of Harvick's manifolds, an engine part that delivers fuel and air. The better the mix, the better the power. Every bit helps in a sport where fractions of seconds count.Engineers at the complex, about 70 miles northeast of Charlotte, use the software to tweak engine-part designs on the computer and generate production patterns, manufacturing manager Rick Grimes said.
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