Carved
Fish Project Opens Door for New Engineering & Art Opportunities
Jordan Pepin, an advanced inspector at QC
Inspection Services (Burnsville, Minn.), wanted to branch into
reverse engineering. Scott Clinton, a taxidermist by trade,
wanted to find a way to expedite his hobby of hand-carving
wooden fish. Working together, they found a way to meld
technology and artistry, digitally capturing an original
sculpture that can be used for customized production of future
wood carvings.
One Fish, Two Fish
In addition to his full-time job preserving
everything from moose to fish, Clinton sculpts whenever he can.
He makes commissioned carvings for customers, creates gifts for
family and friends, gives carving demonstrations at craft shows,
and donates original sculptures to charities. It typically takes
Clinton several days to carve the body of the fish, which he
then painstakingly paints to give each piece its own distinct
markings.
He enjoys the work, but admits that it would
be impossible to make a living carving one fish at a time.
Several months ago, Clinton decided that he had to come up with
a way to expedite the process without sacrificing any of the
craftsmanship his customers have come to expect.
At the suggestion of a friend, Clinton brought his 11-inch
carving of a muskie to Pepin, who had recently purchased
Geomagic Studio. Raindrop Geomagic's software is used for what
the company calls 3D photography, the process of automatically
capturing a physical object and turning it into a digital model
for design, engineering, mass customization and web-based
marketing applications.
Although far from the typical engineering application for
which Pepin purchased Geomagic Studio, Clinton's project served
as an ideal test case for the software's ability to capture
complex physical objects containing organic shapes.
"With no previous surface modeling experience,
user-friendly, intuitive software was vital if we expected to
complete this and future projects within a reasonable
timeframe," says Pepin. "Even with a complex organic surface
like the muskie body, it didn't take us long to familiarize
ourselves with Geomagic's capabilities. We were quickly able to
bring IGES files from Geomagic Studio into CAD programs such as
SolidWorks, AutoCAD, and Pro/E without any problems."
A Larger (Fish) Scale
To create the IGES file Clinton needed, Pepin
did multiple scans of the hand-carved fish with the Steinbichler
Comet 250 white-light scanner. The scans were then aligned and
imported into Geomagic Studio.
Geomagic Studio automatically created a triangle mesh and the
cleaned the file to fill in any holes and decimate polygons.
"One of the most useful features of the software is
curvature-based point sampling and polygon decimation," says
Pepin. "Most of the files we produce with the Comet 250 are
extremely large and dense. Being able to reduce the number of
points or triangles while still maintaining the accuracy of the
model is a great help to me."
Finally, Pepin used Geomagic Studio to create a NURBS surface
model ready for export to a CAD/CAM program as an IGES file.
Using this format, Clinton will be able to reproduce a larger
quantity of his original sculpture more quickly by having it
rough-cut from a 5-axis mill.
Melding of Technology and Artistry
"It usually takes me about 15-20 hours to
carve each individual muskie body by hand," says Clinton. "If I
am working quickly, I can create about one sculpture a week.
With the digital model, a CNC can produce 50-100 fish in a day.
This leaves me free to spend my time hand-painting the finishing
touches on each sculpture."
Using the digital model, Clinton will be able
to repair inconsistencies on the muskie body by changing a fin,
moving an eye, or smoothing a lip. He can exactly reproduce one
side of the sculpture and reverse it, so that the two halves are
mirror images. He can also change the shape of the fish, bending
it so it appears to be in motion. The digital model gives
Clinton the freedom to enlarge or reduce the dimensions of the
fish without having to create different molds.
The digital reproduction of the original muskie sculpture
took one person four to five hours to complete. Pepin says he
can't imagine how long the project would have taken without
Geomagic, or if it could have been done at all. "It would have
been difficult to create a CAD model of the fish because of the
extremely complex and detailed surfaces. I honestly do not think
we could have done it without Geomagic Studio."
A Whole New World
Pepin was impressed enough with Geomagic
Studio capabilities and Raindrop Geomagic's technical support
that QC Inspection ServicesŐ metrology lab has purchased
Geomagic Qualify for rapid inspection work. "Many of our
customers require in-depth analysis of parts," says Pepin. "The
fast reporting that Qualify provides will show problem areas
right away. It will really help us provide quick, accurate
service to our quality control inspection customers."
Pepin is also anxious to begin more reverse engineering and
3D photography projects similar to the work he did for Clinton.
"We have expanded our business to include reverse engineering
for a variety of parts containing complex free-form surfaces,"
he says.
As for Clinton, he is happy with the way the digital fish
turned out, and excited about experimenting with new ideas for
his artwork. "Computer technology has opened a whole new world
to artists," says Clinton. "I don't have a whole lot of
experience with other mediums, but using a CNC will allow me to
reproduce my original wooden fish as an acrylic piece or a
bronze-like composite. I can experiment digitally with different
sizes and shapes. The artistic possibilities are endless." |
