At Vollert|Weckenmann, the manufacture of forms and shuttering pallets is a matter of precision
Form building in precast plants leaves its mark on the quality of the finished products. The demand for highest quality in the manufacture of floors, walls and façade elements can therefore only be met with formwork of utmost precision.
Precast concrete units have long ago shed their negative image of unsightly surfaces through intelligent marketing by the manufactures and continuous further development of mix designs, admixtures and production methods. Large-area precast units like floors, walls and façade elements, where exposed to sight, are elementary design elements of modern aesthetic building architecture. The implementation of tight dimensional tolerances reduces the number of trades involved in finishing a structure, as well as ensuring short erection times on the construction site to a precise schedule. A formwork system whose modular components are finely adjusted to each other and configured to suit the customer’s requirements results in a high production output in the precast plant. The dimensional accuracy of formwork profiles and shuttering pallets is an absolute requisite for safe and reliable automatic processing. Constant dimensional accuracy is of special significance for the safe and trouble-free use of shuttering pallets in carousel systems. The quality requirements applied at Vollert|Weckenmann have therefore always been very high. Reliable adherence to the exacting standards is ensured by manufacturing all elements involved in formwork, including the magnetic technology, in-house. This is the only way to ensure that the robot technology can be implemented effectively and trouble-free. The development and production competence of the Vollert|Weckenmann Group lies with Weckenmann in Dormettingen. Aimed to further optimize the production processes and to enhance the good quality still further, Weckenmann commissioned in Dormetting at the end of 2007 a production hall of 3.000 m³ size dedicated exclusively to the production of structural formwork, battery forms and shuttering pallets to the strictest quality criteria. The production hall, measuring 25 m x 120 m, with six synchronizable gantry crane systems, provides for optimized uninterrupted flow of materials in production and is designed for an annual capacity of over 4,000 tons. The high quality of the products is the focal point of production. Hydraulic precision welding tools are the basis for the dimensional accuracy and the resulting process reliability for shuttering pallets used in carousel systems. The high quality form sheets used to obtain fair-faced concrete surfaces are individually rolled, shot-peened and calibrated to meet the specific requirements of every job. The manufacturer’s high quality standard requires that the sheets are subjected to an additional finishing process. All sheet surfaces undergo surface control to ensure a one-hundred percent visual accuracy and are subsequently calibrated. In cases where the quality specifications are not met when the sheets are ready for shipment, the rejects are once again mechanically and thermally recalibrated. These tasks call for specialists of the kind that are nowadays hard to find. At Vollert|Weckenmann, these skills are communicated within the scope of the in-company training scheme and thus ensured that the skills of this craft are passed on to the younger generation. Following fine calibration of the form sheets, the sheets are fully automatically lightly ground in a special machine. This grinding process provides the sheeting pallets with their high fair-faced concrete quality. Lacquering of all surfaces of the shuttering pallets that do not come into direct contact with the concrete takes place according to the customer’s specifications, using a robust, environmentally friendly multi-component lacquer system. The fair-faced concrete surfaces of the shuttering pallets are not lacquered. To effectively avoid corrosion during transport, the areas that come in direct contact with the concrete are coated with a water-based solventless wax that protects them from corrosion. Through the use of the solventless materials, the limit values in force since 1 November 2007 specified by the VOC Solvent Emission Directive (Volatile Organic Compounds) is significantly fallen below, since here virtually no solvents are released into the environment; alone the use of the solventless corrosion protection wax reduces solvent emission from the predicted 5,300 kg/a to 160 kg/a. Before the shuttering tables start their journey to the customer, they are identified with the project data and inspected by the responsible production team before they are released for shipment. All shuttering pallets used in the plant of a customer are provided with consecutive numbers. In the production process, these numbers serve as the identification numbers for quality assurance. The customers use them for identifying the shuttering pallet for production control. To avoid damage during transport, the shuttering tables are bolted together to form transportable bundles. Shuttering tables destined for combined truck and sea transport are in this way effectively protected from damage so that the quality products arrive in perfect condition at the customer’s site. The investments of Vollert|Weckenmann into this new production facility show that the manufacture of high-quality forms and shuttering pallets in top quality is realized at a fair market price, thanks to well-structured production processes and optimized production conditions. For manufacturers of high-quality precast products, this offers the basis for high value added and high product quality.
Wolfgang Weckenmann
Address/Anschrift
Weckenmann Anlagentechnik GmbH & Co.KG
Birkenstraße 1
72358 Dormettingen/Germany
Tel.: +49 7427 9493-0
Fax: +49 7427 9493-29
info@weckenmann.de www.vollert-weckenmann.de
