Mike Yee writes....
>I mean, I've seen CAD/CAM machines hooked up to that modeller machine that
>manufactures one-offs from a pool of liquid vinyl.....
I wasn't thinking about modeling parts when I made my original post
concerning engineering drawings. I've done something like this, however.
Michigan Tech Surveying students took topographic data over a 27 acre site.
We dumped the data into a coordinate geometry program and came up with
contours. Then we wrote a DXF output file and sent that data to a company
that has the capacity to perform 3D machining. They made a foam model at a
scale of 50 feet to the inch in the X and Y directions and 5 feet to the inch
in the vertical direction. A 3D foam model is much more understandable to, oh
let's say, jurors a court case, or officials at a public hearing on land use,
than would be a flat page of drawings.
So making British car parts is within the current technology. Just
some logistics to overcome in building the database and locating the
machinery, which probably isn't just $itting around waiting for a hobbie$t to
bring in a project.
Reverse engineering is a possibility...we measure our existing parts
and draw them up. I'd be willing to bet that the number of variations in any
one give part would be amazing.
Thanks to all who have responded to date. Who knows where this might
go?
Tim
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