Walking into Cam Tech Industries’ 20,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility is, in some ways, like walking into an art gallery.

Straight ahead is a three-and-a-half-metre wide version of Renoir’s painting Luncheon of the Boating Party, laser-etched into giant stone tiles. Against the wall leans a stained-glass window. Carved wood, friezes and etched glass objets d’art stand about, with a wooden garden recliner by the wall.

What breaks the gallery ambiance is a plain-looking table. Making a humming sound, a garish square box buzzes over top, gliding back and forth on a beam.

That sterile-looking table is the reason for Cam Tech’s existence, and it’s the art on the wall that makes many customers want to buy such a table – thousands are used in 60 countries, sold by 40 dealer companies worldwide.

Mike Sturk photo, Business Edge
Brad Moore is president of Cam Tech Industries, which builds high-tech routers that can etch designs on to a variety of materials.

Cam Tech makes computer numeric controlled (CNC) routers. Brad Moore, the company president, calls his products giant, high-tech, three-dimensional printers. They might also be called robotic artisans.

Either way, Cam Tech manufactures these machines from raw materials. The company builds them in many sizes, speeds and types. Some are able to dispense resins, others are capable of cutting or etching everything from glass and steel to stone and Styrofoam.

The latest, fanciest models use lasers to blast dot-matrix patterns into stone.

They range in price from about $15,000 for the smallest to over $200,000 apiece for the largest, fastest models.

The Cam Tech folks design their own systems, including the software that is able to take computer-assisted drawings and designs, or even a photo, and convert them into something the machines will understand.

Able to recreate cuts perfectly and repeatedly, these inventions may make high-end art, fancy architecture, manufacturing and construction more affordable and accessible than ever.

A cool demonstration of one real-world application is available on the Cam Tech website, where you can see Icecultures – an Ontario ice sculpture company – use one of Cam Tech’s machines to help build a life-size ice version of an Austin Mini – seats and all.

Another common application is in the tombstone market. In ancient times, only the emperor and his ilk could afford to have their faces sculpted, because cutting it into stone was so labour intensive. With this new technology, 3-D, stone memorials are within reach of us all. For the time being, however, we’ll have to settle for something a little smaller than the sphinx.

THE SKINNY
* Name: Cam Tech Industries Inc.
* Website: www.camtech.ca
* Employees: About 50 full-time, nine of whom are full-time engineers and technicians dedicated to research and development (although everyone has at least partial involvement in the R&D)
* Business: Manufacturing high-tech routers.