RV PRO 3D Modelling & 3D Printing Art & Culture

Among manufacturers of decorative furniture, there is a tendency to displace and absorb small manufacturing companies by larger ones that have established mass production of their products. In order to develop, small companies have to solve the issue of increasing their output at the lowest cost.

Automation of production reduces the cost of a product, thereby increasing its competitiveness. One of the elements of production automation is the use of 3D scanning at the sketch development stage.

An example of such a company is Dmitry Zhamkov's Art Workshop. In this article, we will tell you how they manage to use 3D scanning in the production of decorative mirrors.

Previously, all Dmitry Zhamkov's works were performed in a single copy, which was sent to the buyer. In order to make several identical products, it was necessary to start work from scratch, with sketches and blanks. The time to complete such a task varies depending on the size of the mirror, but on average this period is more than 7 days. The production of a single mirror on a CNC milling machine takes only 6-8 hours, which is almost 7 times faster than manual production.

In order to reduce basic costs and make his work more accessible, Dmitry decided to automate manual labor.

As a trial product to get acquainted with all the advantages of using 3D scanning, he provided his own work – a carved decorative mirror. How did the 3D scanning process go and what were the results?

Mirror frame model

The RangeVision specialist needed to obtain high-quality 3D surfaces of the mirror elements and prepare a file for machining on a CNC milling machine.

The decorative mirror consisted of three elements – a central frame and two fish. All the elements were handmade by a craftsman from wood.

Since both fish were the same, it was decided to scan only one of them to reduce working hours. It was planned that a 3D model of the second fish would be obtained by “mirroring” the first one.

Thus, the frame and one of the fish were digitized with the RangeVision PRO 2M 3D scanner.

It took two working days for post-processing of the data, including obtaining a “mirrored” 3D model of the fish and writing a control program for processing on a CNC machine.

As a result of the transition to automated production, the cost of mirrors was reduced by 3 times. This has made them more accessible to customers.

After the work, Dmitry Zhamkov decided to manually produce only one prototype sample, and then scan it. Later, he ordered a similar service for the manufacture of a series of original mirrors. The quality of the 3D model obtained using RangeVision equipment allows you to write a program for a CNC milling machine and automate production to obtain the number of products required by the customer.