The Healey Werks builds classic cars 'better than new', with the help of VX CAD/CAM Software

Melbourne, FL - On the home page of the Healey Werks you'll find a simple but appropriate phrase: "the premier automobile restoration company." Cruise around the company's website, www.healeywerks.com, and you'll be dazzled by the vintage Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar, and Austin Healey cars that the company brought back to their glory days.

But look beneath the glossy paint and glistening chrome and you'll discover that Healey Werks has a secret: many of the cars they have restored are not just as good as the day they rolled out of the factory . . . they're better.

"Our goal at The Healey Werks," says President Craig Hillinger "is to achieve a higher level of excellence with each project. As a result, we're constantly asking ourselves, ‘How can we do that better?' That's why we bought VX CAD/CAM – to help us raise the bar on quality."

The challenge can be daunting. "Often we're asked to start with less than a complete automobile, and customers will frequently say that they want the car to be more reliable, to stop better, to accelerate faster or to handle better. At that point it becomes a design or R&D situation where we are pushing beyond where the factory engineers left off. For that, VX is invaluable."

healey3VX CAD/CAM is used constantly at The Healey Werks. It has been used to design such diverse parts as a trigger wheel sensor for a customer who wanted custom designed traction control, intake manifolds for custom fuel injection, and "out of nothing" suspension elements. Sometimes VX is used to replicate specialized factory tools that are no longer available.

VX helps The Healey Werks successfully deal with the sheer age of some of the cars they are restoring. "If we're building a vintage sixties V12 Ferrari and we need a bushing that is thirty-one thousandths bigger to compensate for wear, you can't order it from the factory; they'd just laugh at you," says Nick Lahrs, The Healey Werks shop foreman. "But you can design what you need in VX and use the CAM feature to make it on one of our CNC machines."

With VX, The Healey Werks can move and align parts, whether solid or wire frame, so that they can monitor internal structures and strength. "With VX," Hillinger says, "we can know better what we're building and be intimately familiar with all aspects of a part. We can have a better idea of how the part will react in a real-world setting."

healeyUsing a digital laser scanner, The Healey Werks can scan parts, import them into VX, manipulate the design in VX, and send the result to the customer for approval. "Importing, visualization, and video enhancement in VX is key to what we do," Hillinger says. "If you're going to morph the fenders of a vintage car so you can install disk brakes, it's infinitely better to be able to do it in VX first."

VX has expanded The Healey Werks' vision of what they can do. "Our focus is much broader now that we have this tool in house," Hillinger says. "Maybe we would have suggested the same approach to meeting the customer's need before, but now – with VX – we can get there a lot more efficiently. We produce more accurate drawings and discover design or engineering issues before we cut metal."

He adds, "We had the choice of stagnating or moving ahead. It became really apparent that we needed the capability to design and/or replicate parts to serve the restoration work, and that's where VX became an integral part of what we do. Using VX CAD/CAM benefits us and our clients as we raise the bar of quality standards higher and higher."

The Healey Werks is the premier provider of motor car restoration. The company serves a worldwide clientele from North America, Australia, Japan, Argentina, and nearly every European nation. Our diversified forte extends from vintage Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Austin Healey, and other European specialty/sports cars, to North American Pre-war, vintage, muscle, and luxury vehicles.