Firms Build Models, Prototypes Ranging From a Watch to a Soviet Tank
Ansar Bakhtiari had a problem.
A pharmacist at Fairview State Hospital in Costa Mesa, he spent a lot of time mixing medications and found it was difficult while holding a beaker of liquid in each hand to roll his wrist and check his watch to monitor reaction times.
So Bakhtiari commissioned a set of patent drawings for a wrist watch to be worn on the side of his wrist. Although odd looking, the design would enable him to monitor the time and observe the chemical reactions without dribbling caustic or toxic chemicals down the front of his shirt.
But ideas and drawings are a long way and many dollars from a finished product. So after a little searching, Bakhtiari took his drawings to Model Technics Inc., a Newport Beach concern that makes prototypes and scale models of everything from large industrial parks to components for classified military projects.
Many people think of model making “as an artsy-craftsy kind of thing,” said Doug Yates, founder and president of the closely held concern.
But, Yates said, just about every new product these days first sees life as either a full-scale working prototype or an intricately detailed, reduced-scale model.
Once Considered a Luxury
Models once were considered “kind of a luxury,” Yates said, “but now are a necessity for planning and promotional purposes.”
Dave Sharbaugh, president of Irvine-based Design West Inc., agrees. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a model may be worth a thousand pictures,” said Sharbaugh, whose company makes product models and designs a variety of products--some for itself and some for outside clients, including part of the prototype space station being built by McDonnell Douglas.
As with just about every other industry in America, competition from Japan--with at least 300 model-making companies--is looming, Sharbaugh said.
And like just about every other industry, model making has entered the computer age: A computerized mill that Model Technics installed recently can be programed to vary the length, depth and width of single cut, turning out complex parts that are accurate to within one 10-thousandth of an inch and trimming hours off the time that would be needed to make them by hand.
About half of Model Technics’ work involves architectural models, which typically are made from wood, polyurethane foam, acrylic and aluminum.
Because it offers the only three-dimensional look at what the finished project will look like, few details are overlooked in the making of an architectural model. At a Model Technics’ work station, for example, one of the company’s 16 employees carefully etched the windowpanes for a model house into a piece of clear plastic. The model, which cost $20,000, is of a $6-million home to be built in Laguna Beach.
The costly detailing is important, Yates said, because “quite often, there is a gap between a drawing and reality . . . . Design is ideas and blue sky. A model is craftsmanship.”
It is also where design problems are frequently discovered--and corrected.
Watch Cost $2,600
In making the prototype of Bakhtiari’s side-view wrist watch, for example, several small changes in design were necessary to make it more natural to wear and view--all part of the “human factors kind of studies” that the company undertook before making the prototype, said Michael Harrison, who designed the finished project--which cost Bakhtiari $2,600.
While that might seem like a lot for a wrist watch that doesn’t even come in a gold case, Bakhtiari hopes to recoup the expense--and make a lot of money--selling production models to others who need to be able to tell the time while their hands are busy.
Sharbaugh calls models an “efficient decision assister,” especially in the increasingly competitive world of business and industry.
As demand grows, the model-making business has expanded at a healthy pace, especially in Orange County’s vibrant industrial and commercial climate.
Model Technics grossed $380,000 in 1985, but the company is taking on larger and more diverse jobs and Yates reckons the business will gross about $420,000 this year. The company typically works on a dozen projects at once, each of which takes from three days to three months to complete.
Yates thinks the increased demand for models is the result of an expansion of their usefulness. In addition to serving as planning aids for developers, models increasingly do double duty as visual aids when submitting projects for regulatory or contract approval and then as sales tools when the project is ready for production.
Sometimes Model Technics makes a model it knows will never go into production.
One such client, the United States government, commissioned Model Technics to make a full-scale steel model of a Soviet T-72 tank. The 5,000 pound tank took four months to make and now is used in a training program at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas.
In 1977, just before the fall of the Shah of Iran, the company made a model of a military airfield that was to be built near Tehran. The project took 10 days to complete and to ensure the security of the project, guards slept at Model Technics’ workshop.
When it was finally complete, a waiting jetliner at Los Angeles International Airport rushed the model back to Iran. But the Shah was driven from power several months later and as far as Yates knows, the airfield was never built.
