Mock-Up of an Eighteenth-Century Oil Mill via Rapid-Prototyping

摘要

Information technologies and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) programs open new ways for conservation, documentation and study of out of date mechanisms. Resulting virtual animations and numerical simulations help to understand and recover our industrial heritage. Currently, get a mock-up from a virtual model is easier and cheaper thanks to low cost rapid prototyping techniques. These scaled models give a more vivid experience of a mechanism and its performance. This paper describes a methodology to obtain a mock-up of an XVIII century oil mill, part of the historical heritage of Fondon (Almeria, Spain). We digitalized the mill components in CAD software using field measurements, got a CNC code to print them on a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) machine, and printed and assembled the mill.