A common use center will be established in Afyonkarahisar where design, education, branding and marketing activities will be coordinated and directed. There will be marble showroom, classes for hands-on training and workshops, education halls, library, design room, company offices in this center. The building was planned in two parts. The first part (entry) will be separated as marble showroom, education and meeting rooms, administrative office, incubation rooms, classes and design center. The second part will be manufacturing workshop where trial production of design products will be made and will be used for education.
The center will have three machine parks that can be used for both education and design activities. Especially, it is in the form of Waterjet, Laser cut and CNC Routers, which are used for cutting, shaping and processing of marble in order to produce design products with high added value. The common feature of these machines is that they are adoptable of information technology, programmable, flexible machines that can produce design products. Therefore, they will be used both in workforce training and in the development of new design products.
Waterjet: A cutting process performed by water by spraying water or water-abrasive mixture between different diameters on hard or soft materials with thicknesses from 0.1 mm to 200 mm on the material with very high speed and high pressure (bar) implements. In this way, any desired shape can be applied in 3D on the marble. Considering that the machine to be purchased within the scope of the project will be used mainly for training purposes, it is thought that it will be able to process 200x100 cm marble and its 5 axis will meet the need.
Laser Cutter: Laser cutters have been used for many years for patterning, modeling, marking and writing processes with laser beams on many surfaces such as metal and wood. Although it is not well known in the marble sector, it has an ability to process on marble. It was thought that it would be sufficient for the laser machine that was purchased within the scope of the project to have the ability to process marble with a power of 150 w and a size of 140x140 cm.
CNC Router: These machines are machines that can process materials such as wood, metal, derlin, cut-stone, marble and plastic, with the support of computer software (CAD-CAM), by drawing them precisely and rigidly without human touch. Considering that the machine which was purchased within the scope of the project will be used mainly for education, it is thought that it will be able to process 200x200x40 cm marble and its 6 axis will meet the need.
The programs that can be used with these machines and which are used extensively in the field of design in the world are as follows; AutoCAD, Rhinoceros, ArtCAM, SprutCAM. These programs will be used in computer aided design (CAD) and manufacturing (CAM) programs, as well as in the development of marble designs with the machines to be purchased within the scope of the project and in industrial design education in the computer education classroom.
Despite the fact that finished marbles are sold 435 usd / tonnes in 2016 in Turkey, finished marbles are sold 1744 usd / tonnes in Italy where these machines are highly used. With the widespread use of these machines and the training of operators to use them, the added value will be increased by switching from traditional production techniques to modern technological production.
