Marine Composites

Gold Coast success story, mouldCAM Pty. Ltd., recently took delivery of the latest portable measurement technology from Norwegian technology supplier - Metronor AS, a new SOLO portable coordinate measuring machine (PCMM), in order to further add to their existing metrology capabilities and reputation for marine and industrial mould qualities.

MouldCAM's founding directors, Jaime Marina and Toby Whitfield, originally met on the professional yacht racing circuit in the 1980s. Toby moved into private enterprise in the early 90s while Jaime became a highly regarded consultant to many of the America's Cup campaigns. The America's Cup is constantly pushing materials to the limits and searching for perfection in the production of symmetrical strong complex curves. In this environment Jaime saw the application of large format 5 axis milling utilised to cut the hull of an America's Cup contender and also observed a composites manufacturing company in Japan that had at its heart a CNC mill.

Jaime could see an engineering revolution for boat development and building techniques, a revolution which could be leveraged by being based in Australia, with its economic growth and cost advantages. In 2001, Toby joined him to provide the complementary marketing and business management skills to develop the concept to reality. The pair designed and built their unique machine and developed their processes, funding it completely by internal resources and the first project commenced in March 2002. Five years later the team has explored and delivered high-quality 3D solutions in innovative design across a spectrum of markets... in architectural projects, private & public transport vehicles, film & entertainment challenges, resources and mining applications, and of course boats which was their first love.

Australian production capacity has since trebled.  mouldCAM is now providing cost-effective design and production expertise into Europe, as well as in Australasia and Asia, and business continues to grow. Operations now include three large scale 5-axis CNC routing machines, including two that measure 43m x 5m x 3m. MouldCAM started in 1992 by partners Jaime Marina and Toby.

mouldCAM's director's first became aware of the Metronor system after seeing the innovative SOLO portable measurement product with some of their clients overseas, particularly in Europe, but also more recently at a number of trade shows in the USA.  The challenge was to efficiently and quickly measure large size boat hull moulds giving immediate feedback to the CAD department within the business to make any modifications required or necessary before the entire mould is completed.

According to Jaime Marina, they had had other equipment demonstrations on-site including portable Arms, laser scanners and also laser tracker systems, but none offered the flexibility, or speed of operation required and that there were major "line of sight" issues with these equipment solutions as well.   mouldCAM in the end could see that the Metronor SOLO system would be the answer to their dimensional measurement needs.

After the Metronor SOLO system was delivered in July 2009, Metronor applications engineer, Henning Kværnø, from Norway and Michael O'Reilly, senior applications engineer from Hi-Tech Metrology's Sydney office spent four days training the team at mouldCAM on the Metronor SOLO system and the Metronor-version of PowerINSPECT software.

The training provided by Metronor and Hi-Tech Metrology, according to Jaime Marina was excellent, and gave everyone who was involved a full knowledge of the system and the confidence to be able to use the system in the day-to-day operations at mouldCAM. Anticiapted productivity benefits that the justification for the purchase of the system was based upon were immediately apparent.

One of mouldCAM's major overseas clients visited the factory in August and was so impressed that they have also now invested in the Metronor technology to aid with the inspection processes within their own business.

mouldCAM sees the Metronor system as being an integral part of the future for the business, and now with the local support and assistance provided by Hi-Tech Metrology, is able to utilize the technology in order to gain even greater market overseas and domestically for their range of innovative products and services to a wide range of industry sectors.