Plasma cutters used in steel shop fabrication

plasma cutter have been around for around 6 -7 years, their ideal use is in terms of the manufacturing process of structural steel fabrication, this is a great advantage for steel shops as speed and accuracy has been increased.

• plasma cutters use a hot 15000 degrees c arch to cut though up to 300mm thick steel


• advantages include improved accuracy&speed.
  
• melts metal and blasts it away from the cut, cleaner finish

portal frame construction

location Williams town, williamson rd. 2005

Because of these very strong and rigid joints some of the bending moment in the rafters is transferred to the columns. This means that the size of the rafters can be reduced or the span can be increased for the same size rafters. This makes portal frames a very efficient construction technique to use for wide span buildings

hi strength concrete, surpassing 100mpa

High-Strength Concrete
In the early 1970s, experts predicted that the practical limit of ready-mixed concrete would be unlikely to exceed a compressive strength greater than 11,000 psi (76 MPa). Over the past two decades, the development of high-strength concrete has enabled builders to easily meet and surpass this estimate. Two buildings in Seattle, Washington, contain concrete with a compressive strength of 19,000 psi (131 MPa).

detail 5

Brick veneer, with timber frame detail res

Concrete pump demo, fits through warehouse wow!

Chemical admixtures

Chemical admixture can be added to ready mix concrete, it order to design the requirments of the concrete to suit the job/situation,

Five Functions

Admixtures are classed according to function. There are five distinct classes of chemical admixtures: air-entraining, water-reducing, retarding, accelerating, and plasticizers (superplasticizers). All other varieties of admixtures fall into the specialty category whose functions include corrosion inhibition, shrinkage reduction, alkali-silica reactivity reduction, workability enhancement, bonding, damp proofing, and coloring. Air-entraining admixtures, which are used to purposely place microscopic air bubbles into the concrete, to decrease weight of concrete structural conponents

Decorative concrete using glass agregates

source: Concrete construction magazine july 1 st. 2006.

• Glass aggregate can be exposed in several different ways
• most typical method exposed agregate procedure using surface retarters addmixes or alternativly, sandblast the surface, diamond cut the surface, glass can also be intergrated in concrete mix, but most commonly broadcast onto the surface of fresh concrete, then conpacted.
• decorative glass concrete is an idea feature for floors and concrete benchtops.
• advailable in a wide variety of colours

photos

drawing

concrete retaing walls for basement (hawthon)

(ABOVE PHOTO),Can see underpinning(huge steel rods driven deep into the gound on 45d angles maintains footings strength from the forces produced by the earths pressure to push into the excavation

This series of photos gives a great insight into the importance of maintaining faces during construction

the excavation is situated on a corner block that has a road quite close to the excavation therefor this process of retaining the walls of the basement excavation is crutial
i was able to see this process in action upon a site visit, the concrete was sprayed on the areas of the wall between the concrete columns. very interesting to see

Pre-cast conc. panel to steel rafters

end wall detail portal frame

more pictures of MFB building

These detailed shots illustraight

• C type girts with bolted connection to hi strength concrete columns
• the form of the external cladding is unusally shaped and requires a subtantial amount of support with is provided by the application of the steel/ concrete structure
  

Portal frame connection detail

detail protal frame pinned connection

MFB complex (Burnley)

My images relate to the Metropolitan Fire bridgade training complex, located at 450 Burnley street, very close to the Burnley exit of the citylink tunnel. It comprises of steel fabrication, aswell as tilt up construction. It has been build by the ABI group, and was completed in 2007. photos include detail of steel framework design.