Designers, engineers
and executives
converge for annual feast of industry ideas.
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The annual manufacturing trade gathering here is a gigantic show-and-tell session for plant manufacturing and automation engineers as well as industrial designers. And while the focus is clearly on industrial manufacturing, it's possible to see just about anything.
That includes a monster truck simulator that MaxFlight Corp. has set up for the diversion of engineers who tire of gawking at new computer-aided design software packages.
MaxFlight's display invites passersby to climb into a simulated truck cab mounted on oversized tires and try navigating a hazardous driving range displayed on a computer screen. The cab shakes and whirls in synchronization with computer screen graphics in response to the driver's manipulation of the controls.
The Lakewood, N.J., company has built and sold about 250 amusement simulators of various types, and has become a regular at the design show because each year its latest simulation includes new technology borrowed from industrial equipment.
Last year, MaxFlight's display was a simulated roller coaster that used hydraulic gear to make it bob, shake and whirl in sequence with computer-generated graphics, said Frank McClintic, the firm's chief executive. This year the truck simulator requires no hydraulics. It's all electric.
"It's more responsive, more realistic than hydraulics," said McClintic. "The technology we used is taken from things developed for robotics, automation and controllers used by industry. I come to this show every year to look around and catch up with what's new, and then we incorporate that into our simulators."
MaxFlight makes flight simulators, roller coasters, monster trucks and bobsleds for malls and entertainment centers around the world, he said.
