The Milling and Digitizing Department provides the means to physically input or output current design intent to and from the clay model and computer systems. The input function involves digitizing, which links the physical geometry embodied in the hand-sculpted clay models to the CATIA software system. Tokyo Boeki probe digitizers capture sectional data directly from the physical clay model. The captured points are then transferred into geometric data to our computer systems.

The output function involves milling, which transfers the preferred design geometry from the computer onto the physical clay model. The design geometry may come from various surfacing software such as Alias or CATIA. The surface data is first converted into numerically controlled cutter paths. Each set of cutter paths then guides Tarus milling machines to cut physical models that replicate the CAD math surface.