Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software company, Open Mind, has assisted in creating a two metre high representation of Icarus, called the Millennium Angel. It was recently exhibited in London (Quaker Gallery, 52 St Martins Lane, 12th June - 2nd July) and is currently travelling to various trade shows, after which it will be cast in bronze and installed in Williamson Park, Lancaster, the home town of the sculptor, Anthony Padgett. The fantastic creature is said to break new artistic ground by fusing leading-edge computer and manufacturing technologies with images of former cultures, dating from British Victoriana back to Persepolis, a centre of technology and learning which was the seat of the Achaemenian kings of Iran (Persia) in the 6th to the 4th centuries BC.

The original 30 cm high sculpture was scanned by both laser and touch probes to produce a reverse engineered computer model which was scaled to two metres in height.

Stereo lithography has been used to produce various parts of the sculpture including the 60 cm3 head, one of the world's largest single-build SLA models.

In all, 15 companies have been involved in the sculpture's manufacture, representing sponsorship in kind valued at œ150,000.

Further details are on www.millennium-angel.co.uk .

Open Mind's responsibility were the two front legs, each measuring 720 x 240 x 240 mm.

They were scanned by Renishaw using its touch probe system and the data was passed as a 12 MB STL file to Open Mind in Wantage.

Here, the company's Hypermill software was used to generate the cutter paths needed to mill the legs based on mesh data created by Alta Systems.

The legs were machined at Yuasa Warwick Machinery from a dense fibre board using a 6 mm ball nose cutter on an Enshu EV650 machining centre fitted with a Fanuc 18 control.

Four sections were produced separately and glued together to form each leg.

Commented Open Mind's Clifford Ashwin, 'These were complicated profiles and some sections had undercuts requiring the fibre board block to be turned over.

The intelligent collision protection within our Hypermill software was especially useful as it was able to remember the new shape of the block after each layer was milled away, enabling retracts to be reduced and cutter paths optimised.

'We were able to progress quickly from a large number of random points to a machineable model, following which we post processed it to generate a program which would run on the Enshu/Fanuc equipment at Yuasa.

We are very pleased to have been able to assist with this most unusual project.'