Reinforcing the future with automation and software in Norway
In the future, there will be increasingly high demands for efficient sustainable processes in the building industry, with a high degree of automation and digitalization. Prefabrication has good conditions for being able to meet these requirements. It is an efficient and quality-assured way of building, and Overhalla Betongbygg is convinced that precast elements will be sought after in the future.
Therefore, the most modern producer in Norway invested in automated reinforcement machinery and innovative software by one of the market leaders in precast technology, Progress Group in close cooperation with their renowned Danish partner CPT.
Effects of automation
Overhalla Betongbygg is already seeing the effects of the investment in the new mesh welding plant M-System Blue-Mesh® with the respective software solution. They have managed to reduce their steel consumption by 20% and were able to produce with lower resource use and higher quality. The acquired machinery has also brought significant improvement in the working conditions with less physically demanding tasks.
The mesh welding plant M-System BlueMesh
The new mesh welding plant produces not only flat mesh but also fully bent reinforcement cages. The use of the so-called single bending heads is the first of its kind in Scandinavia. The 20% steel reduction comes from the machines possibilities for using different wire diameters from 6 to 16 mm and change them automatically in no time. This means, that the M-System BlueMesh can produce according to specific requirements and avoid oversized elements. Another point that helps to reduce steel consumption is the high flexibility of the machine working directly from coil being able to perform cut outs in the right geometry. The bespoke mesh also ensures a higher quality of the concrete elements. If the formwork is placed incorrectly, it will soon be discovered when the complete mesh cage is placed into it. This is an additional control that Overhalla Betongbygg has not had before, and which helps to increase quality.