3-D Printing Firm Makes Pint-Size Versions of ‘Spirit of Detroit’

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The Spirit of Detroit is the subject of a 3-D printing project leading up to the Big M Event, a manufacturing forum which will run concurrently with the Rapid Conference and Exposition, to be held June 9-12 at Cobo Center in downtown Detroit.

Today, Cam Logic Inc. in Oxford began scanning the iconic 26-foot bronze sculpture — created by the late Marshall Fredericks — located on the west side of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building. Once the laser scanning is complete, Cam Logic will begin printing 200 to 500 miniature versions of the sculpture, ranging in height from 5 inches to nearly two feet.

The scanner has been used in the automotive and medical industry for advanced manufacturing for several years now,” says Christine Longroy, event manager for SME, which is hosting the upcoming conference about 3-D printing and related technologies. “But this type of technology is now being used for a greater number of purposes, in this case, preserving artifacts.”

Longroy says Cam Logic plans to give away a number of the miniature statues as a keepsake during the Big M Event. “The company really wanted to create that ‘wow’ factor and introduce this technology,” she says. “And this was the opportunity to do it.”

Since its establishment in 1996, Cam Logic has grown from a three-man business to a company with 18 employees and hundreds of customers throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, says Ian Scribner, the firm’s account manager. “We have also seen the explosion of scanners in both the dental environment as well as (the) medical (industry) where they are scanning either dental wax ups all the way to limbs for custom prosthetics. The evolution in the industry has been incredible over the past 18 years,” he says.

To learn more about the Big M Event, click here. For more information about 2014 Rapid, click here