Heavy fab shop maximizes cranes for better material handling

Kubes Steel custom fabricates extremely large parts, like this 43-ft.-diameter hydroelectric conical draft tube.

Kubes Steel is known for its roll forming and steel bending technology. Located in Stoney Creek, Ont., the company has more than 100,000 square feet of production floor space and about 100 employees spread across five facilities.

The company has focused on perfecting custom work with heavy material handling. It also has had some unique fabricating projects: the Wonder Mountain’s Guardian roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland; aluminum architectural curved building features for the U.S. Embassy in London; and structural cones for the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Projects like these can take up to a year, so the company starts planning its material handling strategies before it ever sends out a bid.

“Our facility and employee numbers all vary depending on the size and complexity of the components we bring in,” said John Ferland, COO. “When we bid on jobs, we look at capacity and all the functionality forms before taking them on.”

Of the five facilities, the main facility primarily focuses on bending and rolling, feeding all the other plants. It offers nine overhead cranes to help bring in materials and move jobs through the facility within a couple of days.

Pre-production Planning

Before taking on a project, the company explores the material size, weight, and configuration; whether fabrication can be done in-house; the ability of current equipment to lift and move the parts; and, very importantly, whether the final product will fit through the door.

“We evaluate all elements of the sequencing,” Ferland explained. “How will we weld and fabricate these components, and how will we flip them? These are important to know even before starting.”

“Also, the type of material [helps determine] which building we decide to move it to,” said Tim Fess, operations manager. “We have a building for clean material like stainless and aluminum. Then we have another building where we like to do our iron for heavy fabrication. We don’t like to mix those two.”

The company spends a lot of time planning before production begins on any project. How material moves through the shop at the various stages of production affects time and cost. The focus tends to be on welding the part, but material handling takes up more time and labor than any other process. Moving such heavy parts can be expensive.

“Estimators need to account for moving these massive components multiple times before [the project is] finally finished,” Fess explained.

Large cylinder components for a 920-ft. mine shaft are currently on Kubes Steel’s production floor.

The company also maximizes its shop floor workflow by using AutoCAD to lay out a component and determine how it will move through production. The fabricator also uses the program to ensure effective loading of finished parts on trucks, which have height and width restrictions. AutoCAD allows Kubes to flip the component around to optimize its spot on the truck. The company then can build custom fixturing to ensure the part can be transferred effectively.

Equipment Use

Within the heavy fabrication shop, Kubes Steel relies on forklifts and overhead cranes (5- to 60-ton capacity) to move massive components through the production stages. To maximize equipment use, the company tries to mobilize on three different shifts. On the day shift, for instance, the company focuses on offloading material deliveries because trucks usually deliver during working hours.

“The cranes can then be in use throughout all three shifts with no interference from another group looking to use that particular crane at the same time,” Ferland explained. “We try to get the highest usage rate out of our cranes as possible.”

Recently, the company noticed some bottlenecks in its bending and rolling facility after the addition of new equipment. After numerous adjustments, workers still were waiting for cranes to become available.

“We wanted to reduce some of the downtime of waiting for cranes,” said Ferland. “So we added two 5-ton cranes—one in each bay.”

For situations that don’t warrant purchasing new cranes, such as loading trucks or alleviating temporary workflow bottlenecks inside the facility, Kubes often brings in smaller cranes from outside companies for short-term use.

Lift Considerations

Kubes limits the use of cranes to only those operators who are certified through legislative training programs. It often sends its workers for advanced rigging courses or overhead hoisting certification. About 25 to 30 Kubes employees are certified for crane operation, and of those, 10 operators deal with heavy rigging operations.

“Working in heavy fab, we are dealing with large welded components that in a lot of cases need to be flipped at least once,” explained Ferland. “Our workers should have the additional training to properly handle these situations to know where the lifting points are and locate the centre of gravity so that they can safely block components and flip them properly.”

The crane equipment also must be certified and able to lift the required weight. Operators visually inspect the cranes at the beginning of any operation, ensuring the chains, slings, and hooks are in good working order.

Fess noted that Kubes Steel also brings in an outside service to catalogue all the equipment and perform an overall annual assessment.

Within the heavy fabrication shop, the company relies on forklifts and overhead cranes to move massive components through the production stages.

The company has found that effective use of its material handling equipment can bring productivity gains. For example, in the rolling and bending facility, a lot of the items are curved and laid down throughout the shop floor. Rather than having a crane operator walk through the maze with a pendant to move the crane, the company has switched all its cranes to remote operation.

“The crane operator can stand in a safe spot to run the crane,” said Fess. “In the heavy fab shop, we have a horn that sounds before the crane moves so people know the crane is coming.”

With small changes like these, operators can spend less time navigating challenges or fixing errors and can move large components easily and safely.

Putting It into Practice

One of these large-component projects, a 920-ft. mine shaft, is currently on Kubes Steel’s production floor. The elevator shaft has already been completed, and the workers now are focused on the ventilation shaft. According to Fess, the project comprises 92 cylinders, each measuring 10 ft. tall. These cylinders are stacked in twos and sent to be painted and shipped to site.

“Each of these fabricated shaft liners weighs around 49,000 pounds,” Fess explained. “We have to rig them, stack them, and then unstack them. There is a lot of handling with this job.”

Ferland added that the project requires stacking for fit and function tests, as well as dimensional tests for height, confirming they are lined up and sitting flush with one another. This also ensures that the orientations correctly match the drawings.

“For obvious reasons we don’t want the end user to lower these into the ventilation shaft and realize they have problems,” Ferland said. “They are all pre-fit ahead of time for this reason.”

These large components are fully welded on one side, then flipped over and welded on the other side. A crane operator with limited experience could pull the bridge right off the crane trying to move them. This is why Kubes Steel focuses on training operators to ensure they are performing best lifting practices.

“Our experienced operators use two lifting points to very carefully lay them over,” said Fess. “Another example is that we make a lot of things that are curved and shaped, so you have to find the centre of gravity before lifting.

That’s a skill in itself, and our operators are capable of performing these tasks.”

Moving large curved or shaped parts comes with other challenges. Fess noted that the company often uses spreader beams instead of chains for lifting, which almost guarantee a straight lift. A spreader beam overtop lifts the 49,000-lb., 15-ft.-diameter cylinders straight up.

“You lose capacity if you are lifting on an angle versus straight,” said Fess. “You have a better hook height if you are lifting straight.” Beyond that, Fess added that the company makes sure it has the best gear for any given application. For example, it recently purchased lifting straps with 90,000-lb. capacity each to lift an 87,000-lb. component for a customer.

“If I would have picked it up with chains, the chains would have left dimples in the customer’s beam,” explained Fess. “It also would have jeopardized the links in the chain, which would then need to be replaced.

There is a time for chains and shackles, and a time for straps and nylon. It’s important to recognize this before you … begin lifting.”

Associate Editor Lindsay Luminoso can be reached at lluminoso@canadianmetalworking.com.