Why are so many industries turning to structural steel outsourcing and detailing for their dry- and wet-goods storage fabrications? Structural steel processing takes a tremendous amount of effort and man-hours to achieve the nearly 99% accuracy that your industry demands for every custom metal fabrication. Plus, you have to consider the ROI of investing in the CapEx equipment and in-house capacity required for large-scale productions and niche detailing.
Fortunately, Southern Metal Fabricators can save you time and money with our structural steel fabrication services for all your support structures, from bins, hoppers, and silos to chutes, stacks, and stairs. We’ve invested in industry-leading automation for materials processing in order to serve as your off-site structural steel processing center.
In this article, we’ll share some examples of how outsourcing steel processing services can accelerate your production timelines and reduce costly mistakes while giving your staff more time to focus on growing your business.
Structural Steel Outsourcing Supports Industrial and Commercial Operations
From steel oil tanks to chemical silos to grain storage bins, every storage system requires industry-specific steel supports to integrate seamlessly with components such as stairs, hoppers, chutes, silos, stacks, and multiple varieties of storage and transport systems.
When these “intermediate” integrations don’t work, your customers lose time and money. This is why both commercial and industrial operations choose Southern Metal Fabricators for structural steel outsourcing for all their processing and detailing needs.
Industries that have turned to us to solve their structural steel support challenges include:
- Steel supports for Express Oil in North Carolina: When driving over “the pit” to have one of their cars serviced, a framework of structural steel now supports each vehicle.
- Holding and transfer bins for Southern Machinery in Tennessee: Fabricated custom bins with bracing and support structures provide powerful durability, so bins can take the pounding of heavy building materials such as crushed stone and gravel.
- Structural fabrication for ThyssenKrupp steel manufacturing in Alabama: We fabricated custom bins, chutes, and storage silos with extensive custom structural supports that we test-assembled and shipped for installation.
Outsourcing CNC Drilling and Sawing Accelerates Timelines
When you’re on a tight deadline for structural steel and materials processing, it’s critically important to be able to increase throughput and speed, without compromising quality. After all, when it comes to building safe and functional structures, precision and accuracy are non-negotiable. Mistakes always have a negative impact on the bottom line.
This is why we invested in the Peddinghaus XDM-630, which provides peace-of-mind precision and significantly faster CNC drilling, sawing, and materials processing. For projects such as OSHA-compliant stairs or ready-to-assemble beams, channels, and base plates, the Peddinghaus saves time and money.
Benefits include:
- Maximized multi-spindle drilling with high-speed drilling and multi-station tool changers.
- Industry-leading roller measurement technology for increased throughput accuracy and efficiency.
- Seamless slot and cope milling, ready to fit-up with no additional grinding required.
- Parts conveyor automation to more quickly convey parts for further processing or unloading.
- Automated speed sewing to reduce cut times with material/cut sensing and other automated features.
Outsourcing Handrail Production Increases Labor Capacity
It’s not exactly a secret in our industry that producing handrails, segments, and complete handrail systems is incredibly time-consuming and laborious. The Bend-Tech Dragon A400 can take handrails off your plate with CNC plasma tube and pipe-cutting automation to make your CAD/CAM designs a reality.
The Bend-Tech Dragon is also versatile enough for platforms and stairs that require handrails, and for cutting carbon, stainless steel, galvanized steel, and aluminum.
Just a few value-add features and benefits include:
- Longer material cutting, up to 24-feet long with pass-through.
- Value-add versatility, cutting a wider variety of materials.
- More material thickness options, essentially cutting any thickness.
- Flexible-sized cutting, including a wide range of shape options and channels.
- Material coolant system, increasing quality and reducing slag and fumes.
Outsourcing Sheet Metal and Plate Production Reduces Costs
Structural steel outsourcing offers many cost-saving benefits, but one of the biggest is reducing unnecessary steps and wasted materials involved with sheet and plate production. This is why the steel industry and design engineers turn to our in-house TRUMPF 3030 Fiber, for industry-leading metal laser cutting speed and precision.
The TRUMPF, combined with Southern Metal Fabricators’ custom metal fabrication expertise, removes extra cleanup, compared to plasma cuts that generate slag. It minimizes or even eliminates extra grinding with clean parts and dramatically increases accuracy for exact metal plate fit-up.
Keep your sheet metal and plate processing on schedule with features such as:
- Precise intricate cutting, for part quality and seamless part removal.
- More material value, for easily post-produced parts from remainder sheets.
- Fewer cutting errors, reducing the risk of collisions and sheet positioning mistakes.
- Increased, faster throughput, doubling sheet throughput for high-speed materials processing.
Outsourcing Angle and Flatline Production Prevents Bottlenecks
Structural steel production details matter. This is especially the case with angle and flatline production, because angles and flatness are key to whether your structural steel projects are accepted or rejected in downstream processes. With the Anglemaster AFPS-643/Q from Peddinhaus, you can expect quality and accuracy for keeping production lines moving on schedule.
Our in-house Anglemaster is the all-in-one solution that fully automates punching, shearing, and other angle and flat line production processes. It’s designed to run constantly, saving time and labor, while ensuring consistent quality and faster output.
Industries trust the Anglemaster and Southern Metal Fabricators for structural steel projects such as:
- Agricultural equipment manufacturing
- Aggregate handling and manufacturing
- Transmission tower and lattice tower manufacturing
- Conveyor and heavy equipment manufacturing
- Barge and ship building
- Stadium seating manufacturing
- Overhead door frame manufacturing
Give Us the Chance to Exceed Expectations with Structural Steel Outsourcing
Structural steel processing is especially challenging for many vendors because compared to mild steel, carbon steel, and other iron-based materials, stainless steel has a lower heat conductivity. The composition of stainless steel means it is difficult to cut, weld, and manipulate in multiple fabrication processes.
The engineers at Southern Metal Fabricators have been solving these custom metal fabrication challenges for well over three decades. We’ve also invested in industry-leading automation and resources in order to save time and money for both industrial and commercial steel projects.Give us a chance to say, “Yes, we can do that!” by outsourcing your structural steel processing to Southern Metal Fabricators. Visit our structural steel fabrication page to learn more benefits about outsourcing your next detailing or processing project or contact us today.
