HOUSTON (AP) — There’s no manual for making an 8-foot-long scale model of an oil tanker. Exploration companies don’t send instructions for how to re-create their ever-more-sophisticated inventions in miniature.
The Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/2qs2jB7 ) reports that’s up to John Richard.
With dexterity that belies his thick, large muscular hands, Richard constructs a wire circuit that will illuminate tiny LED lights on a diorama of an offshore rig. It’s a mix of art and engineering, and Richard is surrounded by the tools of both: paint sprayers and power tools, 3-D printers and laser cutters, and a room full of people working on computer models.
“It’s a good feeling to know that you can reproduce anything,” Richard said.
Every year, the stars of the show at the mammoth Offshore Technology Conference are the models: intricate reproductions of ships, plants, rigs, compressors, engines and drill bits, all nested in dazzling displays, vying for the attention of passers-by. Companies use models to illustrate how their technologies work without bringing in the product, which can weigh thousands of pound and cost a lot to transport and help make sales.
“Models offer an excellent opportunity to showcase unique capabilities in an engaging way for visitors,” said Lisa Albiston, vice president of marketing communications at the energy services firm TechnipFMC. “They offer individuals an educational experience and the opportunity to learn more about the complexities of the oil and gas industry.”
Dozens of those models are painstakingly constructed in a featureless warehouse off Interstate 45 in Houston, by artisans like Richard, who, with over 30 years in the business, has learned the process from start to finish.
Richard is the lead model technician at USM, which has built models for OTC since the show started in 1969. The warehouse floor was recently filled with boxes that headed to the early-May show, marked with the names of industry giants: NOV, Hess, Halliburton.
USM has built about 30 models, and handles the rest for companies that have brought them in from out of town, delicately trucking them to and staging them in booths at NRG Park.
Model-making has been around for centuries, but the craft has changed almost as much as the buildings and new technologies that it mimics.
When a Hungarian immigrant engineer named Steve Johnson started United Scale Models back in 1956, they were mostly made of wood and wire, requiring years of training to machine and glue together.
In the beginning, Johnson taught model makers in the kitchen of his one-bedroom apartment, and construction took place in the living room.
Later they leased a facility in Bellaire and built a custom facility in 1998. Johnson’s sons, Paul and Chris Johnson, took over the family business in 2012.
These days, model-making is still a highly skilled trade, practiced by a small number of craftsmen and women — just over 6,000 in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
Before the advent of 3-D digital imaging that allows engineers to virtually prototype their new products, most complicated construction projects required a miniature version before they could be built.
Rather than prototyping, the primary purpose is now marketing, whether to show off the new product at trade shows or demonstrate the concept to potential financiers. And as the uses of models have changed, so have the skills required to construct them.
By way of demonstration, Richard held a part of a full-scale model drill bit. It’s quite a bit lighter than the real version, made out of plastic rather than steel — but otherwise a 100 percent accurate replica spit out of a 3-D printer.
Decades ago, Richard would have carved it out of wood, after calculating the dimensions by hand.
“I’d have to break the drawings down and then scale it,” he said. “You didn’t push a button and the answer was there.”
In 1999, USM started using 3-D printers, which add layers and layers of plastic on top of each other to create an infinite array of shapes. Now the company has boxlike laser cutters, which can precisely cut a vast array of materials.
A room-sized spraying operation has largely replaced brushes to coat parts with sleek layers of paint. All of that technology has sped up the process, allowing USM to produce upward of 300 models per year in less time with fewer people.
As much as USM has kept up with evolving technology, model-making has been threatened by it as well.
Around a decade ago, USM President Paul Johnson said, interactive videos that show 360-degree views of a product started showing up everywhere. Companies began to think they could skip the physical models, which are tricky to transport, often breaking en route.
But there’s something about a model that still draws people in more than just a digital display.
“In the last five years, people have gotten desensitized to that,” Johnson said. “So at trade shows, you’ll have a giant flat- screen with beautiful animation, and people just walk right by. People don’t even look at it.”
Catering to the oil and gas industry can be a lucrative business. USM’s models range in price from a few hundred thousand dollars for a basic ship or rig, all the way up to the $3.5 million, 2,100-square-foot miniature of what would become the world’s largest petrochemical refinery plant, in the Virgin Islands, requiring a detailed understanding of how the facility worked in order to render each component accurately.
But it can also be a cruel business, as it was last year, when the oil bust torpedoed demand for new products; last year only a handful of model orders came in for OTC.
That’s why, over the years, USM has diversified into full-scale training simulators for the aerospace industry.
Replicas of the fuselages of the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, for example, are used to teach mechanics how to repair the planes. USM also made several of the mock-ups at NASA’s Building 9, where astronauts learn how to use the International Space Station and other craft.
The company had around 120 people on staff when the F-22 program was at its height in the 2000s, but it’s now down to 25 core employees.
As the number of universities with degree programs in model-making has dwindled, USM hires design-savvy people wherever it can find them — often out of the military, Johnson said — and then trains them up over years of practice.
Most of them pass under the tutelage of John Richard, who is among the few experienced model makers to know every part of the process. Born in a small bayou town in Louisiana, he attended the Art Institute of Houston in the 1980s, paying for classes by selling portraits he’d painted.
He then did architectural modeling in Philadelphia, building miniatures of the Philadelphia Orchestra Hall and Baltimore Aquarium, before joining USM to move closer to family.
Richard loves the variability of the job. Despite all the new technology, he clings to the creativity and craftsmanship. And he still thinks painting is the most important part.
“Unpainted, it ain’t worth anything. But painted? Look at it,” Richard said, pointing to the glossy sheen on a drill bit model. “Painting sells. You’re not going to buy a car if it doesn’t have a good paint job.”
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Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com
