California Developer Makes Mini Model Magic with the MDX-540

Gemmiti Model Art was hired to build a detailed model that brings to life a new urban village in the heart of Austin, Texas. With a goal of letting potential buyers easily visualize their new home, the model includes everything from homes and parks to businesses and public transportation.

“This model shows every architectural feature,” said Emily Liechty, Gemmiti Model Art marketing manager. “The amazing thing is that a machine milled almost every piece. We used a Roland MDX-540 benchtop mill to produce perfect, to-scale models.”

This CAD/CAM technology saved a great deal of time and improved the quality of the final product. “It would have been costly and time consuming to make them by hand with the table saw,” said Liechty. “We would have to cut individual parts, like the walls and roofs, and glue them together. The masters would have been much less accurate.”

“It would have been costly and time consuming to make them by hand with the table saw.”

Gemmiti Model Art uses the MDX-540 any time it is more practical to cut a 3-dimensional shape from a solid mass than fabricate it from parts. For the Mueller model, the company used the MDX-540 to mill small-scale (1 inch = 80 feet) houses and commercial buildings with complicated pitched roofs. When dozens of buildings of the same shape are needed, they machine cut a couple of masters and then make molds and cast the duplicates. But when all the buildings on a model are unique, they cut the complex shapes and can use them after just a little clean up.

In the past, sections of pitched roofs were cut on the table saw and assembled, which was time consuming and often problematic. Many small details were often sacrificed when using the table saw and it takes a high skill level to cut and assemble the roofs because of the tight tolerances. With the MDX-540, model makers can easily add the smallest details and every roof and house angle is dead-on accurate.