Anybody who has visited the Ice Hotel in the Swedish village of Jukkasjärvi will know what I mean; rooms filled with stunning imagination and craftsmanship and nobody constrained by “how am I going to get the software to do this?......”
Nature and human creativity are boundless and technology is efficient and so the challenge is this – how do we harmonise and get the best of both worlds?
The solution is simple and I can explain by giving you a recent example. A client of ours needed to produce a realistic training Stoma for patients preparing to use a catheter bag for the first time. The problem they faced was that the existing product did not look or feel like a stoma, it was instead a CAD generated shape.
An actual stoma was laser scanned using high precision scanning and a 3D model was generated from the resultant point clouds. This in turn was 3D printed for client approval and subsequently the mould tool was made.
The training stoma has been amazingly successful in helping people new to the use of catheter bags and it is now in full scale production.
Another example of the same process but this time originated from an artist’s model was the creation of an intricate Stags head.
It is important to note that scanning alone is not enough to provide this level of service; good software is required for the point cloud conversion and we have used 0.3mm diameter milling cutters at 40,000 RPM to create these shapes without the need for polishing and subsequent loss of detailed form.
For more information contact info@ppiuk.net
