I have been working on a problem for a few months now concerning the problems associated with manual layout during precast concrete production. The traditional way is to manually pull measurements and use chalk lines to mark the casting geometry on the production surface at 1:1 scale so that the production crew can get to work setting up the molds and all of the embedded inserts that go along with the elements. This is how it's done in 95 % of plants in North America and it's a big problem due to the time, manpower and effort required to get things right. Mistakes are costly. My company builds plotting robots which can solve this problem by using the CAD data to automatically perform the process above. But there is a catch. These robots are really suited to assembly line production where the robot is in a fixed area and the elements are brought to it and centered for plotting. In North America, it would need to be the reverse. The plotting robot would need to move from production area to production area to perform the layout which is a big problem in terms of calibration alone far less the task of moving such equipment. This is where I think drones could possibly help in that if they are capable of automatically tracing a coordinate field at a fixed height within a defined planar space within 1/8" while carrying and discharging a small payload of marking paint, say 2 or 3 gallons, then there could be a huge opportunity. Customers would pay between 90 and 150k for a solution like that. Noone else is doing this that I am aware of. Is there any interest out there? If so we should talk. via /r/drones http://bit.ly/2TjblLH
Comments
Post a Comment