Cloud-Based Manufacturing with Candy Mechanics

Candy Mechanics are a London-based chocolatier producing custom gift products. Their 2 products are Candy Cards and Lolpops. Their popup stores and corporate events provide an exciting experience for the customer. With your head scanned in 3D and then carved in front of you with a robot, it is important that the magic is not lost with software that does not connect or work well. They have been working with Autodesk's Advanced Consulting team to use Autodesk products to create a cohesive and robust workflow. The first step was to move the process to Autodesk's desktop-based CAM tools and automate the process of creating the design, calculating the toolpaths, and outputting the NC code. This was used to great effect and meant that designs were calculated in a speedy fashion and onboarding time of kiosk operators was reduced as they no longer needed to learn how to use the CAM tools. The drawback for a start-up company was the step cost of purchasing software licenses. As the company grows they need to make a large investment for each new software license. Scalability comes at a cost. The next phase of work has been to move the process from the desktop to the cloud. The process of automation remains the same as for the desktop products: calculate toolpaths, post process, push data to machine scheduling system, feed data to the machine. Candy Mechanics is able to use Forge to calculate toolpaths and Fusion Production to interface with their machines tools. A practical demonstration of the technology and robot machining will be performed as part of the talk.