Challenge: Showing machines weighing up to 30 tonnes to potential clients in a way that reduces the logistical burden of transport and exhibition.
Solution: Artec Leo, Artec Ray II, Artec Studio, Blender, Unity, Microsoft HoloLens, HTC VIVE PRO
The result: A simulated showroom filled with huge machines rendered life-size with stunning realism, including the tiniest details like electrical boxes and wiring. HEMO has already organized virtual exhibitions at many leading industry fairs, with many more in the pipeline.
Why Artec 3D?: By scanning wide areas with Ray II and then precisely digitizing each machine with Leo, the process of building a virtual world is greatly simplified. In Artec Studio, scans can be merged with a single click, speeding up the creation of incredibly detailed simulations, filled with 3D models built using the highest resolution data.
If you've ever been in a factory, worked in an industry, or visited a manufacturing fair, you've surely noticed something in common: massive machines.
Regardless of what is being produced or promoted, these facilities are always full of conveyor belts, generators, compressors and other bulky devices. But how do those machines actually get there?
Inside factories, machines can be moved using forklifts, cranes or special transport carts – wheeled platforms that allow easy movement around the production facility. However, when it comes to shipping between different locations, huge multi-ton machines often require packing in crates and shipping by ship, truck or train.
As you can imagine, this is a huge task, especially for those who sell equipment and constantly move from one trade show to another. There are also cargo trucks needed for transport, which carry significant financial and environmental costs.
In order to face these challenges, the specialist company for cleaning systems HEMO has designed a unique solution that drastically reduces the need for transport - the display of machines in a virtual format.
Industrial digitization on a large scale
Headquartered in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, HEMO has been working with leading manufacturers for decades, helping them meet their solvent and hybrid cleaning system needs.
HEMO's machines, designed for cleaning metal parts before further post-processing or delivery, are extremely effective in removing excess oil, dust and chips. However, these machines are colossal, weighing between 5 and 30 tons, which makes them extremely inconvenient to transport.
Looking for a trade show solution, HEMO turned to Artec's algon ambassador, who suggested digitizing their machines to display them in the digital space.
"Given the number of cables and pipes, it would have been simply impossible to capture these machines without 3D scanning," explained Ramon Spiller, an algon expert. "Manual modeling would require enormous effort, especially to capture the full size of an object without losing detail due to complex geometries, for which CAD data does not exist."
Preparing 3D scans for VR
The digitization of machines has faced three main challenges: precision, scale and speed. Algona helped HEMO overcome all three, equipping their team with the ultra-mobile Artec Leo scanner, the Artec Ray II with a range of 130 meters, and training them to make the most of them.
While the Artec Leo's wireless functionality allowed the team to capture hard-to-reach places in detail, the Artec Ray II's Visual Inertial System (VIS) made the large-scale digitization process quick and easy.
To make the networks small enough to run on Microsoft HoloLens or HTC VIVE PRO devices, but also detailed enough to create a virtual world, HEMO processed its data in Artec Studio. Using this advanced data acquisition and processing software, the scans are stitched together into incredibly realistic meshes, made from the highest resolution data from each scan.
Artec Studio is equipped with advanced algorithms and basic mesh editing tools. In addition to allowing the merging of scans from the Artec Leo and Ray II, these tools provided a seamless process for applying textures, optimizing meshes, and exporting as OBJ files.
"Thanks to the VIS (which roughly aligns the different scans), the Ray II already 'knows' where it is, so it requires almost no preparation," added Spiller. "If we had used a regular handheld scanner with a cable, we probably wouldn't have been able to scan all the required areas. For us, Artec Studio is a big step forward in processing scan data."
Using Blender, the team was able to make minor texture and geometry changes around hard-to-reach areas, such as roll-up doors, before creating a "virtual presentation room" for the exhibits.
The result? A realistic VR world where users can "walk" up to a machine, inspect it up close and decide if it's right for their factory without ever seeing it live. The systems are even 3D scanned with and without covers, allowing users to turn them on or off with a single click, giving the application an interactive dimension.
"Now we no longer have to transport some machines to exhibitions. We can simply take the VR glasses and show them to customers in virtual reality," said Christian Koch, 3D modeling expert at HEMO. "We tried it for the first time this year. People were walking by and asking 'what can I see?' or 'can I try?' It was a real attention grabber!”
Vision of a virtual future
After presenting their machines with great success in Germany, USA and Mexico, HEMO now plans to digitize even more of their products and experiment with other VR applications.
According to Koch, HEMO is even considering a 3D-scanning approach to maintenance, where problems would be diagnosed remotely "through the eyes" of customers wearing VR goggles. In the meantime, he continues to look for ways to improve the performance of the simulations.
In addition to considering hardware solutions like Apple Vision Pro, the company contacted a Microsoft expert to improve application integration. With the increasingly advanced capabilities in VR, Koch sees a bright future for virtual exhibitions at HEMO. His goal is to one day make the company's entire offering available to customers around the world, even in the most remote locations.
"We have different parts and sizes of our machines, which suit different applications, so we want them all to be available as 3D models," Koch concluded. "My wish is to have one showroom where you can select a product on a tablet with one click. That's my vision for 3D scanning and VR."