If you’re assembling any sort of steel structure, the chances are you’ll need to bolt parts together. To do that, you’ll need accurately drilled holes. Here at Steelo we use Voortman beam and plate drilling machines to drill our steel.
Often on sites, holes are drilled in steel beams using a magnetic drill. These drills can be carried around with you, and have high strength magnets which allow the drill to be fixed to the steel. The user locates the drill and then engages the magnet to fix it in place. The user is then able to drill the holes at their convenience.
But there’s a better way to drill steel. Here at Steelo we combine Tekla software with Voortman drilling machines to drill holes that are incredibly accurate.
How does it work?
These machines use lasers to measure the exact dimensions of the steel they are about to drill. They then move the steel (or move the drill bit) to the hole centres specified by the software on our computers. They can then drill, tap, counter sink and more to an extremely high degree of accuracy.
Making use of these machines, we’re able to drill holes in a fraction of the time and much more precisely.
Best of all, there is no need for any manual programming. As a design engineer, I can send my drawings straight from the model on my computer to the machines. That means – as long as the model on my computer is accurate, the holes that are drilled will be accurate too!
There’s no chance that a hole will be drilled the wrong size, or that it will be a few millimetres away from where it should be.
We’ve had some engineers from Voortman in this week to do some maintenance on the machines, which means they’ve been out of action for a few days. We can still drill holes without them, but it makes you realise how much easier and faster it is to use the machines.
These machines are expensive but we use them because they fit perfectly with what Steelo is all about – getting the job done to the best possible standard and getting it done on time.
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