After taking about a thousand photos of a rig, our first step is to design each part with 3D modeling. This is Detroit's latest Spartan/Smeal ladder which will be complete in early 2019. Following this phase, we 3D print or photo etch each of the 700-800 parts and assemble them to create a "tooling model". Then, we're off to mass production of all the parts for decoration and assembly. There are no cutting corners when building department specific replicas, so the entire development/production process takes about a year.
