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Reinforcement Steel Machinery

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Case Study

New Pile Cage Machine Gives Added Edge to Lemon's Output

Preamble: Lemon Groundworks of Wickford has taken delivery of a new M.E.P automatic pile cage machine to augment their manual assembly process. The machine has added substantially to output potential

'In the current un-predictable construction market it is the highly responsive operating company that is quick to react and more flexible than its competitors that should survive'.

Colin Prior of Lemon Groundwork Supplies has put his philosophy into action when he specified M.E.P's latest automatic Pile Cage machine to enhance the company's successful pile cage operations.

Lemon Groundwork Supplies, based at Wickford, were established in 1978 to support the UK construction industry as both a supply and supply and fix company for cut & bent steel reinforcement bars, mesh and clay heave products, along with a full range of associated accessories and services.

Before the arrival of the new GAM, pile cages were produced by hand via Lemon's own team of steel fixers; these ranged in size from 100mm o/d to 2100mm o/d and were either wire tacked or hand welded.

The GAM from M.E.P of Italy was supplied through UK agents Whitelegg Machines, who had a long association with the company which already had M.E.P rebar link benders at their two sites.

The full GAM range brings a new dimension to fast, accurate pile cage assembly with a capability to produce automatically welded cages from 150mm o/d up to 2000mm o/d and to a massive 21 Metres long.

The configuration of the GAM is unique in that the welding head moves along the longitudinal bars. Competitive machines 'push' the cage through the welding head, so requiring a 15 metre cage to have a 30 metre operational length! In the case of Colin's shop the compact GAM was the only machine to fit the space available.

The forming operation commences with the chosen number of longitudinal, cage-forming rebar rods being loaded and secured into the end indexing plate. The spiral forming coil is fed from an adjacent pay off coil into the automatic robot weld head, which after the first few manual tacks can be left to rotate and weld automatically via a dedicated plc.

The main mobile head moves along the guide rails, carrying the welding unit and the spiral forming mechanism. The spiral pitch can be set automatically and is controlled by the rotation speed of the longitudinal bars. Welding time is adjustable to suit the bar and weld wire diameter and speed of rotation with automatic control giving even, consistent welds.

To add to the speed of changeover the patented tooling can be quickly set for any cage diameter. The PLC automatically calculates the position for the holding bushes enabling the operator to be sure that the set up the tooling in the correct position first time.

Speaking after a few weeks of the machine operating, Colin Prior observed "the GAM is going to pitch us into the large contract market, which we could not meet with our current assembly methods; my output is improved by a factor of 3, enabling much better staff utilisation".

"The staff released can now concentrate on short runs of specialist cages which still have to be hand made and which still form an important part of our customer offering, I look forward to the arrival of a second machine to further increase output"