Inside the Shop Turning Concepts Into Working Reality

Every build starts with a question, not a blueprint. In this behind-the-scenes look at an R&D model shop, skilled teams transform raw materials into precise, working prototypes—adapting on the fly, solving real-world problems, and collaborating across disciplines. It’s a hands-on process where experience, craftsmanship, and innovation come together to turn complex ideas into tangible solutions.

Transcript

00:00:01 Every project is completely different. There's no cookbook to how to do these model studies cuz they're all so different. But we basically have to come together and decide how we're going to build these models piece by piece. You know, the real world is the real world. Stuff is wrong, something breaks, you know, all these things

00:00:21 happen. Artic is historically flexible with our sponsors in that we shift, we adjust, we modify our scopes, we we make sure that we're still giving our our sponsor a solution that they need. That's where our team of subject matter experts at comes into play because you have so many different backgrounds from the research side, from, you know, our R&D fab shop side. We all put our heads

00:00:44 together and we come up with the best plan of attack. You know, when these things happen, I can go right across the road. Literally, I go over there and we'll talk about it. You know, there's this age-old saying like, "Oh, you know, we could just draw something up on a a napkin and and that's our that's what we need to build." I'm here to tell you that I've kind of done that

00:01:02 before.
>> I mean, you figure out what's wrong and what needs to be fixed and, you know, make it work. The overall goal of this whole model building is to have a working model. So, if you run into a problem, figure out what's wrong with it and just make it right. Some of these guys have been here 10, 12 years and they learn

00:01:18 from people who were here 15, 20 years before them. So there's a lot of knowledge you pass down and that's really where a lot of it comes from. You know, you can't learn this stuff in a classroom or watching it on YouTube or wherever you would learn it. It's just you got to get in there and do it. It's a team effort. You know, there's a lot of things. We don't

00:01:36 know all the answers, but amongst all of us, I mean, the answer can be found usually. And so it's very rarely does like a whole new approach come with a whole new product. you know, we're just like, uh, okay, we'll try it. You know, that's all we can do. We're R&D because it's fun. Even when it's not fun and, you know, it's 130 degrees and you're under a model with no

00:01:55 ventilation and that particular instant might suck, but when once you're done and you stand back and look at it, you're like, we built that. It's nice to sit back and look at something and say, 2 months ago, this was a pile of flat glass sitting on a pallet and now we've we've got this, you know? I mean, it's it's pretty cool. So these guys are are the guys that build

00:02:14 our model. Without them, you know, what we do here at Eric and physical modeling is not possible. We have carpenters that build the deck. We have craftsmen that'll basically mold and route all of our acrylic components. We have machinists that will help us put our instrumentation on the model for any instrumentation probe we need or

00:02:32 anything like that. We have welders that help us weld our main structures, our plumbing pipes, things like that. We even have natural gas coming to this model cuz we have to keep it warm. you know, temperature changes. Glass doesn't like that. So, there's so many different things that have to come together and all work in in in in harmony for these models to be

00:02:50 successful. It's not just building a model. A lot more goes into it. In physical models, one of the most important things is precision and keeping our level our errors down in construction and placement of our structures and all these kind of things. If we're all let's say by 1 in in this model, then it's 25 in or a little over 2 ft in prototype. It's a

00:03:08 big problem.
>> [music]
>> So, it's painful sometimes because we do work in the elements and it's hot and when we're out here shooting a model to grade or building it or I have a total station and we're trying to get a model of a a component set exactly right, it could take hours and moving it millimeters to get it just

00:03:25 where it needs to go. Everything you see behind me, for example, in the import lock model, you know, we had to draw it all out in the 3D program, make sure everything fit to the specs of the design drawings that we're shooting for. The key to that is communication, right? The key to that is collaboration and it's just all it all comes together because

00:03:42 there's no part of that that's simple and those guys really do an excellent job of keeping you know reality in check.
>> They have problems real world problems and we have to bring that to life in a model form to solve it for a lower cost. It's something different every day. Nothing's ever the same. Nothing ever fits the same

00:04:04 every time. We never cut the same part twice. It's always a a different journey. So, we have everything from a hammer and a skill saw to a CNC fiveaxis router, 3D printing. We can route 4x8 foam blocks all the way to 5x10 acrylic. We've got water jets. We can, you know, cut metal. You You can dream it up. We can cut it. It's an adventure every day in the model

00:04:30 shop.
>> I run CNC, the five axis CNC routers. Sometimes I'll run the frog mill and the water jets and work on master cam. So when you're approaching, you have to figure, you have to say to yourself, you know, how am I going to build this or how am I going to seal something off from leaking? There's different applications

00:04:50 and different processes for different materials, [music]
>> but we get it done. And you know that just speaks to their their work ethic and their drive to make sure that our product here is superior and that we're meeting the criteria we need of each one of these model studies. Our R&D fab shop don't just work solely, you know, for CHL. They work for

00:05:08 GSL. They work for military projects. They got all these other things going on. Success that we've had over the past several years, especially since that I've been here. We can attribute a lot of that to the incredible leadership at R&D Fab Shops. You know, we've made a lot of different changes to the way we build models here at Eric, especially our physical

00:05:26 hydraulic models. And they've been not just supportive, but instrumental in helping that process and and developing that methodology and really just making sure we have the right guys working on the right projects with the right skill sets, you know, to adapt to all of this. So, you know, without that leadership and without that guidance, I don't think we

00:05:46 would be where we're at today.
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