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What you envision is what you see

By PAUL SWIDER
Published June 25, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - A picture is worth a thousand words, but for an architect, a model can be worth many tens of thousands of dollars. Christine Weigle doesn't think it has to be that way.

Weigle started Zmage 18 months ago aiming to make modeling easier for architects, designers, engineers and anyone else seeking to build something but lacking corporate financing required for detailed prototypes that can make or break a project.

She invested $150,000 of her own money into software and training, but mostly into a printer that works in three dimensions.

"Whatever anyone can draw in 3D, I can make that happen," said Weigle, 55.

The device is called a rapid prototype machine and is made by Z Corp., a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The machine uses regular printer parts but instead of spraying ink on paper, it sprays a kind of glue onto layers of plaster. By printing these layers, each 0.04 inches thick, in successive cross-sections of an object, the machine can take a computer image and print it as an actual object. In color.

Z Corp.'s machines are used by the likes of General Motors, Ford and Whirlpool. The company says shoe companies such as Adidas and Wolverine love the machine because it can crank out full-color models for focus groups and then bring back modifications for second opinions in just minutes. Hand-built models can take weeks.

NASA and the U.S. military are also using the prototype machines, said Gary Fudge, with Z Corp.

Such exotic applications are far out and expensive, yet Z Corp.'s machines are priced so that they can be used by people like Weigle, who works out of her home in Terra Ceia. The machines also are used by schools such as the University of South Florida and St. Petersburg College and even high schools.

Weigle happened upon the technology through her husband, Brad, who works with Photo Science in St. Petersburg. Brad saw the machine at a conference and asked if it could print a 3D image from his mapping work. When he showed his wife the plaster model of a remote Hawaiian valley, the couple were so fascinated they decided this could be her new career.

Christine had spent years in banking, both in North Carolina and Florida, finishing five years ago as a high-net-worth banker for SunTrust. She was looking to "redesign" herself, she said. Always good at math, she still knew nothing of computer drawing, but has taken to it quickly.

"If they had had this years ago, I probably would have been an engineer," she said of the computer design software she now embraces. "It's not rocket science."

But the very tools that are used by rocket scientists are applicable here, Weigle said. Just starting the business, she has been doing pro bono work to prove her worth.

She created a model for a doctor's invention that won him investment, she said. And she created a model for a proposed pavilion at Admiral Farragut Academy.

The models speak for themselves, Weigle said, efficiently displaying volumes of information by giving people something they can hold and turn and look at but that is a more precise replica than the more expensive hand-made models. She said the savings vary but she can print a model in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional techniques.

"I'm trying to help businesses grow in a visual way," she said. "How much faster could you close that deal? How much more impressed would your investors be if they could see it?"

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 03:13:03]