So many items in today’s modern world are produced through heavy steel fabrication. Tracks which your train uses on your daily commute, the steel skeleton of airports or sports stadiums where your favourite football team plays, as well as the steel used for reinforcing the concrete structure of buildings, bridges and roads. It is also commonly used in oil and gas engineering, renewable energy, nuclear and transport sectors to name just a few.
Heavy steel fabricated products are all around us, but have you ever wondered how these products are made? In this guide, we look at what it takes to produce high quality heavy steel fabrications.
What is heavy steel fabrication?
In a nutshell, heavy steel fabrication is the manipulation of the raw material of steel into a finished product, component or structure.
It takes a lot of skill and expertise
Although a simple explanation, engineers require a lot of skill, expertise and experience to produce high quality, precision-made fabrications. Some companies offering heavy steel fabrication services may offer only a selection of processes, whereas others will offer a complete range so that they are able to provide their customers with a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all of their fabrication needs. These processes include:
- Different welding techniques are used in fabrication:
- MIG Welding (metal inert gas) –a constant wire feed is used as an electrode to join the metal together.
- TIG Welding (tungsten inert gas) – a tungsten electrode is used to produce the weld in conjunction with a separate filler material.
- Spot Welding – used to join overlapping metal sheets.
- NDT (Non-destructive testing). Personnel trained for NDT will carry out a thorough material evaluation to ensure the products structural integrity, as well as wear, fatigue, corrosion, stress and other factors which may affect the reliability.
- Material processing. This term covers a number of processes which will be carried out with exacting precision, high quality standards and reliability. The processes are as follows:
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- Profiling
- Plasma cutting
- Laser cutting
- Flame cutting
- Chamfering
- Machining
- Boring
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- Drilling
- Bending
- Forming
- Levelling
- Sawing
- Cropping
- Shot blasting
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- Painting and Finishing. Depending on the customer’s specifications, there are a number of finishes that can be applied to the fabrication.
To be able to carry out all of these services, a heavy steel fabrication company would need to invest in a range of machinery. This would need to include brake presses which bend the steel, manipulation machinery which is capable of forming the steel into a tube, and machinery which is able to carry out horizontal boring of up to 10 tonnes in weight.
Lycett Fabrications – a heavy steel fabrication company with over 30 years’ experience
Based in the heart of the industrial Midlands, Lycett Fabrications are able to supply both medium and heavy steel fabrications of up to 10 tonnes. With a commitment to investing in the latest machinery, we are able to provide a comprehensive fabrication service from our facilities which include a 26,000 square foot production area.
Regardless of the size of your project, our skilled engineers are able to produce bespoke fabrications, manufactured under stringent quality practices, to meet your particular specifications. Added to this, we can offer short lead times thanks to our 24 hour work capacity together with our ability to access to 5,000 tonnes of steel at any time.
To find out more about Lycett’s heavy steel fabrication services, please browse our website, telephone us on 01827 53231 or send us a message through our contact us page.