Thank you to Andrew Dickson for giving us a tour of the Mark Williams Enterprises shop.  Mark Williams Enterprises manufactures high performance auto racing parts from a variety of materials and employs a wide range of CNC technologies.  We saw top of the line machines working in conjunction with tried and tested CNC legends.  In the images you can see some machines from the late 1970s that are run from a punch tape system as well as high precicion Eclipse measuring systems,  Niigata Horizontal Mills, laser and plasma cutters.  The high end manufacturer utilizes Autodesk Inventor to create accurate parametric models.  In house research also develops custom CNC technologies in order to complement machines already on the market.  Andrew demonstrated a CNC torquing machine developed in house and programed with NI’s LabView software, essentially a visual programming workbench for custom instruments.  The shop also employs an in-house tooling expert, able to fabricate custom bits and tools for the shop.

All in all it was an eye opener to see the caliber of work in this shop.  The economic feasability of fabrication and manufacturing equipment is allowing architects and designers to appropriate CNC machines for the design process.  Seeing this shop in action gave us a glimpse of the broadness of CNC technology, a lot which is still not utilized by architects or designers directly.  It begs the question, is there a line between the tools which architects should and should not appropriate for design?