Michel Cotte

Advanced industrial archaeology: A new reverse-engineering process for contextualising and digitising ancient technical objects

Since virtual engineering has been introduced inside industries, time processes have been reduced and products are more adapted to customer needs. Nowadays, the digital mock-up (DMU) is the centre point for all teams: design, manufacturing, communication etc. However, physical mock-ups and prototypes are sometimes requested. Consequently, a back-and-forth action between the real and the virtual worlds is necessary. Our research team has developed a reverse-engineering methodology not only for capturing technical characteristics of industrial objects but also for capitalising knowledge and know-how which are required for contextualising life cycles. More precisely, we work with ancient industrial machines. It is what we call advanced industrial archaeology. Thanks to the coupling of different kinds of three-dimensional (3D) digitalisation technologies and computer aided design (CAD) software, we are able to re-design old industrial objects and old processes. To illustrate our proposal, we will describe one of the experiments we have done with a salt-washing machine which is nearly 100 years old: from the global 3D digitalisation of the plant to precise parts design, we have rediscovered the enterprise process and understoo its integration in the economic context.

Knowledge management for industrial heritage

All along history, humans have always invented, created to improve their standard of liv-ing. Many machines have been built, sometimes simple and others very complex. In order to achieve the best results for customers, machines, industrial plants and humans are moved, displaced and replaced. It is the global humanity technical knowledge that dis-appears. Indeed, there is a lack in the actually conservation methods: sciences and technologies have to be considered and not only architecture. Our heritage research focuses on the mechanical and technical point of view. For instance, in a factory, there is the building but also actua-tors, motors and machines that produce product: taking into account the technical point of view can reach to a better understanding of the past. Thats why preserving the national technical patrimony has now become the priority of governments and world organizations. Our approach proposes a new kind of finality: as saving and maintaining physical object cost a lot for museums, and sometimes dismantling is impossible as the machine falls in ruin, we propose to preserve it as a numerical object. The aim of this research is to define the global process and technologies used for imple-menting a numerical model of old machines. The final aim is to constitute a new reference for museologic actors, using actual techniques and methods for putting old machines and technical means in “virtual use”, taking into account the working situation including human being at work. This process is illustrated by an example we performed: a steam engine.

3D Digitalization for Patrimonial Machines

Nowadays, digital document is becoming the standard way of working: travellers have lighter bags but mainly transmission of such documents is faster, and their use is far more convenient to search into them. Consequently, digitalizing physical paper is also very common: many people own a scanner at home. But what about objects? 3D artefacts also need to be digital. CAD software is nearly always used by enterprises for designing their product. But what about old objects, old machines, 100 years older or even more? These basics of technical knowledge have also to be digitalized. 3D scanning technologies are fully emerging in Industrial Engineering. Our scientific researches are targeted on old objects issued from heritage. We propose to virtualize them. But 3D scanning technologies need to be customized as we are working with patrimony where sometimes it is impossible to lighten the object or to move it. The aim of this communication is to define a methodology using a decision tree with adapted operators for digitalizing old objects respecting patrimony conditions. In addition, we illustrate our research with two examples where it has been used digitalizing technologies.