At a trade show booth, a pellet boiler looks like an elegant cabinet with a door. Yet the whole advantage of the design sits in the burner, which nobody gets to see. Mocek Kotły from Pleszew, Poland (kotly-mocek.pl), needed a way to show its OXYPELL® burner in motion — at trade shows, in sales presentations and in marketing materials. The answer is one minute of 3D animation in cross-section that opens the boiler right in front of visitors.
Sight is our strongest sense — what we see grabs attention faster and stays in memory longer than what we hear or read. At a trade show you can see this with the naked eye. In a hall full of booths, conversations and noise, people stop where something moves and makes sense at once. A sales rep’s story about grates and air streams has to be heard and imagined. An animation only has to be seen.
From the outside, a pellet boiler is a casing, a control panel and a flame in the sight glass. What sets one boiler apart from another — how the fuel is dosed, where the combustion air comes from and what happens to the ash — is hidden inside. A cutaway animation opens the unit in front of visitors and shows what words cannot convey so that everyone gets it the first time. Short captions in the frame guide the viewer even when the hall is too loud to hear any sound.
The film opens on the grey body of the burner and, after a few seconds, cuts it in half. From that moment the viewer looks inside and follows the whole cycle — from the first pellet dose to cleaning the grate.
Cleaning the grate during operation is a feature Mocek highlights in its materials about the OXYPELL burner; according to the company, the solution is protected by a patent for an ash removal system that works without shutting the boiler down (Murator, sponsored article, in Polish).
In a spec sheet, a feature like this takes up one row of a table, next to output, efficiency and hopper capacity. For a design engineer that is enough. Installers, distributors and end customers, however, want to understand how it works and what is in it for them. The animation answers both questions at once: the grate under the flame makes a pulsing motion, the ash falls and the fire keeps burning. A few seconds of footage replace a paragraph of technical description and show the benefit right away — less work around the boiler.
How much does an animation like this cost?
The calculator gives an estimated cost of a cutaway animation based on film length, the number of phases and whether a CAD model exists. Result in two minutes, no contact details needed.
Check the estimated costFor a technical animation studio, a device’s CAD file is the starting point for a whole family of creative work. The model of the burner and boiler is built once — and then the same 3D scene can produce further pieces, each for a different audience and a different channel.
The benefit is simple: each additional form means new shots, editing and format, not production from scratch. The manufacturer gets a consistent image of the device everywhere — from the booth to the manual — and every next piece costs less than the first. More on this approach: 3D product animation.
Heating and ventilation manufacturers face a similar challenge: the most important things happen inside the device or in the air around it. For Flowair, 3D animations explain destratification and how an air curtain works so that anyone can understand it, not just an engineer. How animation helps heating and ventilation manufacturers: 3D animation for HVAC.
Questions heating equipment manufacturers ask most often when preparing for a trade show — about materials, film length, channels and cost.
Yes. CAD models or technical drawings are enough, and the successive phases of operation — dosing, ignition, combustion, cleaning — are agreed with the design engineer. Neither a prototype nor a unit from the factory floor is needed.
This means the animation can be ready before the device premieres at a trade show. It is a common situation: the product is still in testing, while the booth and catalog have to be prepared well in advance.
In a pellet boiler, a feeder doses pellet fuel into the burner, an igniter lights the bed and a fan supplies combustion air. Designs differ in how they feed fuel, how they route the air and how they remove ash.
These differences are worth showing, because from the outside boilers look alike. In the animation for Mocek Kotły the key elements turned out to be the two air streams and grate cleaning during combustion — features buyers ask about most often and cannot see at the booth.
Ideally one that can be watched while walking past the booth — from several dozen seconds to about a minute, played in a loop. Longer material is worth dividing into clear phases so that each part makes sense on its own.
Sound often cannot be heard in the hall, so short captions in the frame work better than a voice-over. A version with captions in one language, such as English, also serves foreign visitors at no extra cost.
Yes. Every frame is a full-resolution render suitable for print, the product page and social media — like the six phase frames shown above.
It is worth pointing out at the start which phases should go into the catalog. Then the frames are also composed as standalone images, with room for a description, not just as stills from the film.
The cost depends on the film length, the number of phases, effects (fire, airflow) and whether a ready CAD model exists. An animation with fire and airflow takes more work than a simple exploded view.
The pricing calculator shows an estimated cost in two minutes. An exact quote follows after a short conversation about the materials and the places where the film will work.
Describe your product and the channel where the animation will work — we will reply with suggested shots and a quote.
