Heavy equipment lighter than AiR - Seco/Warwick

SECO/WARWICK specializes in innovative heat treatment furnaces. Its solutions and technologies are used in the automotive, aviation, electronics and other demanding industries. In our partnership with SECO/WARWICK, we took on the challenge of presenting the company's equipment in Augmented Reality during the THERMPROCESS show.

For the 2019 edition of the THERMPROCESS trade fair, SECO/WARWICK partnered with ValueLogic to create an Augmented Reality solution that would allow trade show visitors to see the furnace working in real-time without it even being in the booth. It provided a safe, ecological, and cost-effective solution for SECO/WARWICK and created an exciting and engaging experience for visitors to Thermoprocess 2019.

When you produce big, heavy equipment like furnace, it is hard to demonstrate it during trade shows. Just getting to the venue is a project in itself. As a company that as a first deployed holographic technology (SECO/LENS) and as being recognized as an innovation leader, we were looking for an innovative way of showing product premiere. ValueLogic helped us with creating an inspiring experience for our clients that made them remember our brand and technology.

Katarzyna Sawka Global Marketing Director, SECO/WARWICK

The biggest challenge for SECO/WARWICK and ValueLogic was that the proposed AR solution had to work flawlessly, in real-time, and show all the small working of a complex piece of machinery. The trust Seco/Warwick placed in us to deliver the solution in a short time frame, at quality, was immense.

The main technology challenges were in designing and building an interactive application that would show the product in the best light while displaying almost real-time operational data in an inspection tool.

One final hurdle was that not all mobile devices are currently capable of displaying AR applications. We needed a solution that would work for every visitor to make sure that Seco/Warwick showed its products to as many attendees as possible.

Once we had decided that the fundamental element of bringing the virtual furnace to the show would be an accurate 3D AR model that could rotate and be inspected from a distance or close up, we had to design the hardware to support that goal. We created AR markers that would allow the image to be viewed at a height of 3.5m, from as far as 20m away.

Rather than building a native application that would only work on devices with AR support, we chose AR.js to deliver a web-based solution instead of a native application. We also created a static page as a fallback scenario, to make sure that nobody at Thermoprocess 2019 missed out on the experience.

"When we thought about reimagining our presence at the show, we knew that it might be difficult and risky to use new technologies. ValueLogic’s commitment to the project and its focus on delivering outstanding technology made us feel more secure. We were able to give visitors a glimpse into the future of our industry."

Katarzyna Sawka Global Marketing Director, SECO/WARWICK

As the final effect of our cooperation, trade fair visitors could see SUPER IQ – a universal chamber furnace for carburizing and quenching steel - in AR technology.