TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND PROCESS INNOVATION TO SUPPORT THE RESTORATION OF CLASSIC CARS

The paper describes an on-going project of applied research aimed at reinterpreting in a modern way the restoration of classic cars with the support of front-end technologies, identifying new processes and methodologies at the service of artisan know-how. The restoration of classic cars relies indeed on mature technologies that require high skills improved through years of experience and involve long lead times. The research activity is being carried out with a long experienced laboratory, Laboratorio Lopane, and its main aim is to evaluate the employment of digital technologies across all the steps of the restoration and to improve the company know-how. Low cost and user friendly technologies have been employed and tested for real projects within the company and with its employees in order to improve their knowledge about the topic and evaluate the results. To date, diverse technologies ranging from high quality laser scanners to the Microsoft Kinect, have been employed to acquire the shape of the cars to be restored, the resulting meshes and points clouds reversed to mathematical surfaces with commercial and open-source software and the final models prototyped to obtain different maquettes.