A few young men from the University of Žilina have started to be interested in laser scanning during study. Today the company digitalizes manufacturing facilities not only for BMW or Audi but also helps to reconstruct shattered monuments.

To be successful in competition you have to create a specific product. The company iQservices made it. The company of recent university graduates is working mainly for Western Europe, where the method of focusing area by laser scanning becoming a standard in the planning and reconstruction of buildings.

.the beginnings with Germans

Co-owner František Janíček was studying industrial engineering. When he was student he became part of the association Fraunhofer IPA Slovakia thanks to his professor John Košturiak ten years ago. This association is dedicated to applied research. Košturiak was collaborating with Bernd Becker who developed a laser scanner using for creating technical documentation of buildings and facilities at Fraunhofer Institute in German city Stuttgart. He has begun scanning production halls and prepared their digital 3D models together with Slovak branch of the German Institute.

Students of the University of Žilina could establish a company already during the third year of college thanks to this cooperation and could work for Audi, BMW and Ford before their graduation. This is practical example of technology transfer to universities that the European Union promotes in its education documents. Firstly they were working for a German company iQvolution that specialized only in automotive industry. It was sufficient in good times but after the onset of the economic crisis it proved to be a fatal strategy and the company went down. Janíček with his Slovak colleagues have seized the chance and established their own business iQservices. We had to change strategy. "We decided to spread the risk and make more specializations," he explains.

.lightning fast scanner

A laser scanner that acquires basic data reminds a projector. The scanner has size about 20 x 30 x 20 cm and is placed on a tripod stand. It rotates horizontally during the measuring, while the mirror oscillates vertically. "The advantage is its speed," says Janíček. You put it into the room or hall and it makes a few hundred thousand measurements per second. The laser beam scans the area and renders data in the form of point clouds which symbolize the coordinates of the object. "If we scan outdoor of this building we would be able to focus it several times faster than using the tools of geodesy," explains Janíček.

Initially the company was working with a three-dimensional documentation of buildings but now also with complicated projections of pipelines or analysis for automakers including so-called collision detection: “They send us scans of the paint booth and car body structure. We have to find out whether the car passes through the booth without collision.” Recently they formed a projected documentation for Chevron refinery, which is expanding its operation in Ghent, Belgium. They draw production halls for industry and the focus on basic positions and also on the distribution of electrical paths, pipes, paint booths and the location of robots.

In the case of buildings we talk about the focusing of facades and creating drawings for architects, when they need something to rebuild, for example insert lift or extend the staircase. "Or structural engineers need to know whether the original building can bear a new structure."

.valuable contracts

Synagogues and digitization of Žilina´s station S2, where a new cultural center was created from bales of straw, beer crates and shipping containers, presents only about five percent of iQservices Slovak production. A huge part of their production is concentrated abroad. They were working for automakers but also for example for aircraft manufacturer Airbus and robot manufacturer Kuka. They have digitized part of the Vienna subway when the city needed to replace escalators. They helped the major chemical company in Finland when they designed stocking infrastructure for a new pipeline to a digital factory model. "Week downtime costs about one hundred million euros and if reconstruction does not fit for the first time around it can be a problem," says Janíček. 'Digitization of space is more convenient than when workers at workplace will find that we cannot pass this way and the proposal must be reworked." This example illustrates that their work is innovative. "Once there was a humorous situation when guys came to refit pipes because they were used to always modify the initial construction. Finally everything was all right for the first try and they drove back iron truck profiles intended for scrap."

.ruins

They save costs, time and energy for their clients. However in some fields it is impossible to reconstruct by form of try and error at all and architects are dependent on the digital documentation.

iQservices digitized sacristy of demolished Franciscan monastery in German town Oberwesel. Conservationists were monitoring all operations. It was necessary to plan everything in advance and the only possibility was a digital restoration under which the architects could design missing parts of vaults. It is a wonderful area opened to the public. By visiting the sacristy the man finds himself like in another world,” says Janíček. As part of a volunteer action ruins of the Lietava castle, which has no original documentation, have been digitized.

There are ten people working full-time and several external workers in this young company. "Our specialization cannot be taught at school. Therefore we established a classroom in which we train our own college students," describes Janíček." They become part of our projects and gain skills. 

Zdroj | Matej Gašparovič .týždeň - 13.mája 2013