Thought that the hydrants our company made circa 1890-1906 were about the best looking hydrants ever. But the details were so complicated procuring foundry tooling to reproduce the look seemed cost prohibitive, assuming I could find a pattern shop willing to tackle the project
Told our GM that I thought that I could use our CAD system (CADKey by Kubotek) to create electronic masters for the patterns, while keeping the cores, the machining, & the internal components the same as we use in our “bread & butter” hydrant and make the foundry tools at an affordable price. He gave me a go-ahead and I created the models, then our manufacturing manager sent the job out to a shop with a 5 axis mill running “lights out”, not bad results.
· What I was trying to reproduce the look of
· The electronic assembly model
· Photo of 1st piece
