Case study

A monumental contract for HadFab and a FICEP HP16T6 CNC Angle Line

HadFab Ltd, who are a long standing customer of FICEP, received a substantial and exciting contract to produce the steelwork for a unique monument in Holland. HadFab, based in Haddington near Edinburgh, have many years of experience in producing complete structures, fixtures, fittings and towers for power and telecommunications. They are now utilising this expertise to produce an unique statue designed by the prominent sculptor Mr Antony Gormley and commissioned by the Dutch government for the town of Lelystad. Antony Gormley is the world renowned sculptor famous for the 'Angel of the North' and 'Another Place' – the latter consists of 100 cast-iron; life-size figures spread out along three kilometers of the foreshore on Crosby beach near Liverpool.

Once the initial shape of the sculpture was designed, the wire diagram was then detailed in a Tekla Structures programme and interfaced with Steel Projects Winsteel to produce machine codes for HadFab’s FICEP angle line.

Angle profiles for the statue were punched and sheared to length by the company’s FICEP machinery before the highly skilled labour-intensive shaping of the material was undertaken to form the required 550 nodes. Producing these 2.5m diameter nodes was extremely time consuming - some had up to 27 angles meeting together to form locating points around the structure which had to be bolted and welded in position.

Every angle member was a different length and produced from steel sections ranging in sizes from 60mm x 60mm to 200mm x 200mm.

HadFab were fabricating directly from the computer model with a laptop on the shop floor, as conventional 2D drawings were not suitable for communicating the fabrication information that was needed by the shop floor assembly team.

In total over 32,000 holes were punched or drilled in the angle profiles and the total weight of the structure will be 60 tonnes.

In all the project will have taken 18 months to complete.

The new 25 metre high statue, depicting a crouching man, will be completely constructed from steel angle profiles produced by HadFab on the very latest “state of the art” FICEP HP16T6 CNC angle line. HadFab’s Managing Director – commented, “This is a one-off unique structure that epitomises the way software, machine technology and manual fabrication techniques can work together.

The challenges of the design, detailing, equipment performance and quality fabricators has have been extensive. Numerous companies were initially contacted by Mr Gormley to produce the complex steelwork, but most refused the job after completing feasibility studies.

HadFab‘s expertise and the company's 'Can do attitude' was instrumental in securing this contract, however, whilst there are many challenges to overcome we have every confidence in the technology we have invested in and the people in our employ to complete the job to everybody's satisfaction.”

FICEP HP16T6 CNC Angle Line

This feature rich FICEP machine has a numerous optional extras available and can be configured to meet the customer's precise requirements. The new technology incorporated in this machine combined with the impressive infeed transfer speed of up to 100 metres per minute gives it a clear advantage. The machine can be equipped with - Automatic feeding and loading, punching, drilling with tool changer, notching, marking utilising cassette or individual characters, quick change punch and die sets, quick change shear blades, automatic part unloading for the out feed conveyor and is further enhanced with the Steel Projects software suite.

This machine now brings the total number of FICEP machines operated by HadFab to 4.

TECHNICAL DATA