Business Profile: Double R Steel

Shop upgrades during the move create cleaner air, easier movement of plate throughout the facility

When Double R Steel decided to invest in a new plate roller to tackle thicker plate rolling jobs, management chose the Faccin 4HEL 3154 four-roll plate bending system, which has a 3.1-meter roll length with a 54-cm top roll.

When Double R Steel decided to invest in a new plate roller to tackle thicker plate rolling jobs, management chose the Faccin 4HEL 3154 four-roll plate bending system, which has a 3.1-meter roll length with a 54-cm top roll.

Since 1994 Double R Steel has served the steel plate rolling and structural steel rolling markets. Its value-added plasma cutting, beveling, and welding services, and its quick turnaround times, have made it a key provider of everything from large plate rolling jobs for water towers and fuel storage tanks to rail bending for light rapid transit systems. With a move from Kitchener, Ont., to Cambridge, Ont., earlier this year, the company took the opportunity to upgrade some of its equipment, improving the functionality of the shop floor.

Space Upgrade

Double R Steel was founded in 1994 in Kitchener, Ontario, in response to a need for resquaring, beveling, and rolling of plate steel for Ontario-based metal fabricators and OEMs.

In 2005 the shop was purchased by Don Voisin and his partner Rob Denison. Voisin, after 20 years in banking and mergers and acquisitions, wanted to be hands-on within a company rather than brokering deals. He and Rob were attracted to Double R for a variety of reasons.

“We have a very short sales cycle,” Voisin explained. “Our lead time on orders is seven to 10 days, which is quick. There is also no overseas threat to the business – the material is just way too heavy to ship. We also have no automotive exposure or foreign exchange risk, because even though what we fabricate may be shipped further afield, our customers are pretty much all here in Canada. Also, for me, it was a small enough business that I could get my head around it relatively quickly.”

The business has grown and outgrown locations over time. In February 2016 Double R began its move to Cambridge. Within 60 days the whole shop was up and running. The new building is 30,000 sq. ft. of fully craned manufacturing space and more office space than the business currently requires.

“The building we moved from was very suitable for what we do, with 72-ft.-wide bays that were 325 ft. long with large glass windows, but it was also 65 years old and could get very cold in winter with all of that glass,” said Voisin. “I started looking for something new some time ago, but it was hard to find an ideal location. Many buildings were too far away to expect all my team to move there. Eventually we found this.”

The new building is less than five minutes from the main 401 highway corridor and likely added no more than 15 minutes to the commute for Double R Steel employees.

Moving large plate using some of the six cranes Double R’s new location is equipped with.

Moving large plate using some of the six cranes Double R’s new location is equipped with.

Plate Rolling Expertise

The Double R team is key to everything that happens on the shop floor. Of the 15 employees, over half of them have been with the business for 14 years or more.

“Our team really likes what they do; they take pride in their work and it shows,” Voisin said.

The abilities of the team are well-known in industry as well. This is made evident even by the shop’s suppliers. For instance, three years ago, Double R invested in a new plate roller from Faccin, and Faccin USA’s Steve Bonnay understood what they were capable of. When it came to choosing the software that would go with Double R’s investment in Faccin’s 4HEL 3154 model, Bonnay knew they wouldn’t need his most advanced system.

“Our PGS Ultra software has a selection of stock shapes included in it. It is designed for companies with a less knowledgeable team to be able to reproduce shapes with the click of a button,” Bonnay explained. “The Double R team is much more sophisticated than that. For them, it wouldn’t be worth the investment.”

Voisin has been investing in equipment at a steady pace in the past few years to ensure that the skill of his operators is matched by the equipment they are using. He also wants to ensure that those investments help open new doors for the company. The Faccin purchase was one part of that.

“We were looking at our market segment, which was ¼- to 1-in. plate,” recalled Voisin. “But we had been getting calls for heavier plate work. Basically, at the time we were trying to decide whether to expand into heavier equipment to do thicker plate, or go for lighter-gauge jobs to grow our market share. We decided to go bigger.”

Based on positive recommendations from other shops in Ontario, they chose the Faccin 4HEL 3154, which has a 3.1-meter roll length with a 54-cm top roll.

Four roll plate bending rolls are considered versatile and easy to use. As Bonnay explained, the double-pinch design means you end up with the smallest amount of “flat” at the start of a roll with this design, and cylinders can be rolled in one pass.

But any piece of equipment is only as good as the operator at the controls.

Rolled parts on the Double R Steel shop floor.

Rolled parts on the Double R Steel shop floor.

“Our guys figure stuff out,” said Voisin. “In many cases, nobody else can match our precision. We have one customer in Sault Ste. Marie who is making wheels for industrial machines, so his cylinders must be round. He has tried companies closer, but they can’t do the job to his specifications.”

Cleaner Plasma Cutting

Other upgrades have made a difference to the shop floor as well. Six years ago, Voisin upgraded the shop’s plasma cutter to a Messer HPR260XD system with Hypertherm’s ProNest® software, which includes the company’s True Hole technology for better nesting, etching, and cutting.

This machine runs up and down 100 feet of track over an 80-ft.-long table. Shortly after that upgrade, Double R received a large number of orders for ethanol storage tanks, which kept the table running two shifts, 20 hours a day. “Our older technology would not have been able to keep up with that demand,” recalled Voisin.

During the recent move, Voisin got rid of the water table the shop was using for its plasma system and replaced it with a Veriform downdraft table.

“The water table was old and taking it apart and putting it back together for the move would have been very difficult,” said Voisin. “With the downdraft table you get cleaner air. Maybe 1 per cent of smoke will escape into the atmosphere, whereas with the water table you would have noticeably more smoke escaping. The downdraft table is a cleaner system with less maintenance to clean out the slag.”

Bending Rails

Double R Steel’s machinery investments are consistently creating new opportunities for the shop. For instance, about a year and a half ago, Double R refurbished its Pullmax Z-60, a 3.5-in. angle roll machine, one of two Pullmax angle rolls on the shop floor. Soon afterwards the shop was approached by the people building the light rapid transit system (LRT) in the Waterloo Region to curve the railway tracks required for the project.

Rails already bent, and in the process of being bent for Waterloo, Ont.’s new LRT system.

Rails already bent, and in the process of being bent for Waterloo, Ont.’s new LRT system.

The rapid transit system installation is underway. Stage 1, a 19-kilometre route with 16 stops, is scheduled to begin service in 2017.

“We were originally contracted to do 800 pieces, each 39 ft. long and weighing 1,495 lbs. That is a lot of steel,” said Voisin. “Now we are up to 900 pieces and the Z-60 is doing fine”.

The move hasn’t gotten in the way of any of the work Double R does; it has simply provided a more comfortable and better-equipped space to do it in. The shop now has six overhead cranes to help move material (three from the old location and three that were already in the newer building), and they may need to add more.

For Voisin, the important thing is to ensure the shop continues to be able to deliver to customers the benefits it has become known for: precise work delivered in a timely manner.

“Our lead time is seven to 10 days,” Voisin noted. “Many of our competitors can’t match that.”

Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@canadianfabweld.com.

Double R Steel, 800-368-0774, www.doublersteel.com

Faccin USA, Inc., 813-664-8884, www.faccin.com

 

Double R Steel’s work may primarily involve large jobs for large customers, however the company has also developed a side business in customized fire pit rings. You can send the shop your custom design via the Double R Steel website or choose from a variety of patterns supplied on the page. Above are examples of a custom job ready to ship out.

Double R Steel’s work may primarily involve large jobs for large customers, however the company has also developed a side business in customized fire pit rings. You can send the shop your custom design via the Double R Steel website or choose from a variety of patterns supplied on the page. Above are examples of a custom job ready to ship out.

Four-roll plate bending basics

Four-roll plate bending rolls offer a variety of benefits in the plate rolling process. According to Faccin USA General Manager Steve Bonnay, these systems can boost your productivity by as much as 30 per cent.

“If you were running your plate roller just eight hours a week, a four-roll machine is unnecessary, as you won’t get all of the benefits out of it,” said Bonnay. “But for a shop like Double R that is using theirs all the time, it does make a big difference.”

Bonnay also noted that you will have less flat at the start of your roll using a four-roll system.

“You can never completely get rid of that flat, but you are as close as you can be with this,” Bonnay explained.

Bonnay said that, because you can hold material static and bend from both sides, you can also achieve more complexity with the system. Faccin’s website offers more details:

The rear lateral roll, opposite to the feeding side, can be used as a backgauge for immediate plate squaring, resulting in easy plate alignment and one-man operation of the machine.

After the plate is squared, it is always securely clamped between the top and bottom central pinch rolls, so prebending and rolling operations are safe and precise without the risk of the plate slipping.

The prebending operation does not require the plate to tilt below the feeding level (as is required with traditional three-roll machines); therefore, horizontal motorized roller tables can be used to further improve the introduction of the plate between the rolls.

The cylinder can be rolled to the diameter needed immediately after the prebending of the leading edge. This means that the machine needs less workshop space, as an area for plate feeding is on one side of the machine only.

The bending of the trailing edge is carried out after the cylinder is rolled. Basically, cylinders can be rolled in one pass, in one direction.

About the Author
Canadian Fabricating & Welding

Rob Colman

Editor

1154 Warden Avenue

Toronto, M1R 0A1 Canada

905-235-0471

Robert Colman has worked as a writer and editor for more than 25 years, covering the needs of a variety of trades. He has been dedicated to the metalworking industry for the past 13 years, serving as editor for Metalworking Production & Purchasing (MP&P) and, since January 2016, the editor of Canadian Fabricating & Welding. He graduated with a B.A. degree from McGill University and a Master’s degree from UBC.