Faced with a potentially weighty problem around balcony cladding, Alpha Rail collaborated with Yorkshire Laser to come up with a light-weight, more cost-effective solution.
Alpha Rail had been brought in late to take over the balcony project on three large blocks of newbuild apartments in London. The apartments’ architects had originally planned for the decorative cladding panels on the balconies of one of the blocks to be made of mild steel but with each balcony requiring seven panels, the weight and cost of this would have been too great.
Recognising that aluminium would be a more suitable material Alpha Rail, fabricators and installers of galvanised metal railings, gates and guard rails plus decorative metalwork, sought out Yorkshire Laser as experts in laser cutting and sheet metal fabrication, to help.
After an exchange of details and initial discussions, Yorkshire Laser produced samples for approval. Selection made, they set about the aluminium sheet metal fabrication process with their Amada EMS laser punch combination machine profiling the desired pattern in the 1.4m x 1m standard panels and Amada ATC automatic tool change press brake CNC folding the ‘L’ shaped side panels.
The nature of the 1.5mm aluminium meant it was prone to twisting during fabrication – something that would be exaggerated when the panels were fitted side by side. To overcome this risk, Yorkshire Laser designed and manufactured bracings and jigs to hold the panels in place during production thus ensuring a quality product.
In all, Yorkshire Laser manufactured and delivered some 120 panels all within the 10-week quoted delivery time frame. Cut to size and appropriately patterned, the panels were finished in a copper coating to mimic the corten self-rusting steel that had originally been planned.
“An internet search put Yorkshire Laser top of the list, and they have been brilliant to work with. They turned around the samples as quickly as they could, were able to give input and ideas on how to get around problems that we had and being relatively close to us meant getting samples during the approval process was nice and easy. I’d recommend them to others. Very helpful and a valuable resource.”
Andrew Williams, Project Engineer, Alpha Rail
