Ford Motor Company restores Michigan Central Station with 3D tech

When Ford Motor Co. decided to purchase and restore the Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown, everyone knew the ambitious project would cost hundreds of millions of dollars but few may have considered what it takes to recreate pieces of the past.

A plan hatched in late 2019 took shape in early 2020 to bring in mechanical engineers who use 3D scanning technology to capture images of the metal and plaster parts of the building that need to be reconstructed in an effort to protect the historical integrity of the iconic project.

Not even the coronavirus pandemic would slow this resurrection.

A team of three experts from Computer Aided Technology, which is headquartered in suburban Chicago with an office in Pleasant Ridge, combed sections of the interior and exterior of the 18-story building with a handheld portable 3D scanner. Data put into the computer is used to make molds of ornate windows, decorative trim and detailed ceiling tiles that match their original specifications.

Imagine scanning a product at CVS or Target to do a price check. It's the same light technology.

In this case, a portable scanner uses 15 laser crosses that digitally photograph the shape of any physical object and then the files are used to complete the contoured surfaces and shapes.

Computer data is used to recreate reality.

"The scanner lets you essentially take an existing physical object and scan it and make a digital clay. Once you have that, you can do whatever you want," Rich Werneth, CEO of Computer Aided Technology, told the Free Press from his office in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. 

"You can scan someone's face to create a mask," he said. "The train station has all of these architectural details, iron work, plaster work that were decayed and parts of it were needed to be rebuilt."

Engineers obtain images of damaged pieces and undamaged pieces, and then use the technology to rebuild shapes and structures in their original design. It's a little bit like using two puzzles each with missing pieces to complete one flawless puzzle.

They digitize ceiling tile and windows and convert those computer files into digital clay. This process of rebuilding parts in the station is quicker, more precise and cheaper than trying to hand-draw and measure everything.

Nearly two dozen computer files have been created and delivered to the train station's restoration team led by Rich Bardelli to start fabrication of the missing and damaged pieces of the train station.

The Beaux-Arts Classical style train station, which opened the day after Christmas in 1913, carried soldiers to and from World War II. The Detroit site sat abandoned from 1988 to 2018, when Ford bought it to create a new technology campus. 

"The key part is that there are so many pieces that aren’t here and pieces that we can scan that are partial," said Bardelli, Ford's construction manager for the station and other projects in Corktown.

"We’re doing the front windows and ceiling in the men’s reading room. They’re intricate pieces. We’re really in the beginning stages of the interior restoration," he said. "These are key pieces that need to get done to ensure we have the right detail. Because they’re so old, we don’t have drawings of them. So the new technology helps us scan pieces that existed. We can actually 3D print them in the material that would get put up; like a plastic or synthetic material or even print them so they can be used as molds or casts for plaster or iron."

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Ford reached out to Werneth and his company to brainstorm the most cost effective and most efficient path to restoration, he said. "They came to us to talk about something else completely. Our team suggested, 'Why don't you do this?' "

They moved forward in earnest in early 2020, pausing for the COVID-19 shutdown.

"Our team went in with the handheld scanners and worked with the local construction crew with areas they wanted to capture and rebuild. We took that back and then gave them files to work, from all over the building," Werneth said. "You can take a cast iron window grate and with a piece that's all broken off — take a good part from something else and sketch in the areas (with the computer)."

Computer files will be used by a tool maker who will cast or forge the metal or plaster. 

"The 3D data can feed into a machine that cuts into the metal or pours molds or makes metal from a mold," he explained.

Printing from 3D machines is done primarily with plastic, not metal or plaster, Werneth said. 

His company saved Ford tens of thousands of dollars by scanning at no charge, he said, noting the companies have a long-term relationship — Ford uses 3D printers in some of its manufacturing operations.

"This is not a typical project for us," said Werneth, an aerospace engineer. "When it came up, I just wanted to do it as part of our relationships with Ford. For the most part, it's our Michigan team. For me, I really love this story of this classic building built over a century ago by the same people who built Grand Central Station and it hasn't been used for 30 years and now it's being converted into an advanced manufacturing center for a leading manufacturer of cool stuff."

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Using this technology is part of a growing trend among preservationists globally.

Ted Ryan, Ford's archivist and heritage brand manager, said, "Museums and restoration projects around the world are exploring ways to preserve and care for collections and 3D printing is a fantastic means to do so. If we can use 3D printing to help us build cars, we can use it to help us restore the train station."

As of August, workers were in the middle of Phase 2 of the restoration of the station, the longest and most labor-intensive part of the project that involves repairing more than eight acres of masonry.

"While the virus has impacted our project in some ways due to availability of the workforce, materials and logistics, there hasn't been any fundamental shifts to our overall development plan," Christina Twelftree, Ford spokeswoman for the Corktown project, told the Free Press in August. "We still expect to meet our original construction completion date for the train station at the end of 2022."

The train station on Michigan Avenue is seven miles down the street from Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn. The restoration project has made headlines worldwide because so many families have so many memories of passing through Detroit.

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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at 313-222-6512 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.

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