When Your Customers Are the Rich & Famous, Off-the-Shelf Aircraft Interiors Just Won't Do

Jerry Fain Models tackles new frontiers in custom manufacturing

July 26, 2000 -- When your customer is the purchaser of a $250-million jet, there's no such thing as off-the-shelf interior fittings or trim. Everything needs to be customized to exacting specifications that pass the most-demanding aesthetic judgments. That's the business in which Jerry Fain Models thrives. Thanks to new tools such as Geomagic Studio from Raindrop Geomagic (Durham, NC), Jerry Fain Models is able to take on new projects and complete them in one-quarter of the time they took in the past.

Based in Bedford, Texas, Jerry Fain Models (http://www.fain.com) provides high-quality prototype and machining services for the automotive and aerospace industries. A prime business area is custom-made fittings for luxury aircraft. Customers include luxury jet manufacturers such as Gulfstream and Bombardier, and the artists and designers who create aircraft interiors for celebrities, heads of state and major corporations. Within this environment, it's not enough to meet manufacturing tolerances; everything has to make a statement, whether it is marble inlays or solid gold fittings.

Fittings for a Flying Vase

A recent project illustrates the demands placed on Jerry Fain Models and the vast potential for increased speed, accuracy and new business provided by digital duplication and custom manufacturing technologies. The project required Jerry Fain Models to create gold fittings for hand-blown glass vases and custom cabinetry. In addition to meeting the artist's demands, the fittings needed to be engineered to meet Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. In the past, this project might have been impossible for the company to take on, according to Mike Berdan, the company's engineering manager.

"We'd have to figure out how to hold a 10- to 15-pound glass vase and measure it, which would be impossible given its shape," says Berdan. "We would never get the exact curvature - it would be like trying to measure a person's face."

Even items that appear rather simple -- such as cabinet trim -- are more complex than they appear. The cabinets in luxury jets are rarely square. It normally takes several days or even weeks of obtaining materials, measuring by hand, making templates and trial and error to complete the custom trim for a typical cabinet.

Redefining the Process

That Jerry Fain Models was able to take on the project and complete it in record time shows how new technology is redefining existing custom manufacturing practices and opening the door for entirely new applications. The process used for the glass vase fittings was simple: The vases were scanned by the company's SMX laser, a portable unit capable of scanning an object of almost any shape with accuracy of up to a thousandth of an inch. Surfaces for the resulting point cloud data were generated in Geomagic Studio and exported as a standardized IGES NURBS model into the company's CAD/CAM package, SDRC Master Series. Bracket design and tooling were completed within SDRC.

"We were done in about an hour," says Berdan. "Being able to do this was a huge win in the customer's eyes. A lot of firms would have turned the job down. Having the capability to digitally duplicate the physical model is a competitive advantage."

Another competitive advantage, according to Berdan, was the amount of time it took to become productive using Geomagic Studio. "I found the website during a search for 'reverse engineering,' downloaded the trial file, read the tutorial and in a couple hours was up and running."

The software runs just as efficiently on the company's UNIX and NT workstations, says Berdan, and supports standard input and output formats that can be read by any system. The ability to exchange data is especially valuable to Jerry Fain Models, since the company is usually part of a team that works together to make all the custom components of an airplane, automotive or boat interior.

New Horizons

Since purchasing Geomagic Studio in January and completing the aircraft fittings project, Berdan sees the company's horizons expanding. "We are very highly qualified to build NURBS surfaces for all kinds of customers," he says. As simple as that might sound, it opens up many opportunities.

Jerry Fain Models can now recreate almost any part. Berdan says the company can, for example, reverse-engineer parts for old aircraft that have changed hundreds of times over the years and no longer have current design specifications on the records. Internally, the company will use Geomagic Studio as an analysis package to verify what it produces for customers and to check surfaces against the original part.

An immediate new area of business is a service bureau that not only provides scanning, but can produce practically any part, tool or mold. "We can do it all now," says Berdan, "from concept, design and reverse engineering to the final product." With these comprehensive capabilities, Jerry Fain Models will continue to be a hidden, but significant, player in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.