(EM&C: West Columbia, SC) -- Engineered Metals and Composites Inc. (EM&C) is a premier original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of aluminum towers and small products for the marine industry. From T-tops, hard tops, and towers, to rod holders, leaning posts, rails, and poling platforms, the company provides the quality enhancements and accessories for fishing and pleasure boats.
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In order to create these products, EM&C’s craftsmen design and manually shape the towers to fit the boats, which can be a laborious and time-intensive process. For EM&C to maintain its competitive prices, it needed to upgrade its manufacturing process to take advantage of computer modeling technologies that would increase quality and decrease production time.
Solution
EM&C contacted 3DScanCo, a division of Laser Design Inc., about possible solutions to the manufacturing challenges it faced. 3DScanCo consulted with EM&C to incorporate 3-D scanning into its existing manufacturing process—a valuable tool that would accurately capture data before modeling and thus reduce EM&C’s prototyping cycle.
3DScanCo’s engineers traveled to EM&C’s manufacturing workshop to demonstrate the Handyscan 3D, a handheld 3-D scanning system, and Geomagic Shape reverse-engineering software. This solution would be able to precisely document new and existing designs for later use, as well as ensure the tightest fit possible of EM&C’s products to their customers’ boats. After taking advantage of 3DScanCo’s two-day on-site training program, EM&C was able to easily redefine its manufacturing process through the use of 3-D scanning.
Results
“I was impressed by how knowledgeable and helpful 3DScanCo’s engineers are,” says Angela Snelgrove, a draftsman at EM&C. “They quickly got up to speed and consulted us every step of the way during our project, and provided training and support for all of our technical questions. 3DScanCo’s helpful and consultative nature throughout the entire process allowed them to come up with a solution to fit our exact needs—and it worked! We have seen increases in accuracy, manufacturing efficiency, and product quality, and would not hesitate to work with them again in the future.”
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