Step Drill Bit

Step Drill Bit

The End Of The Beam Drill Line?

For structural steel fabricators - the guys who cut, weld, shape and create joists, trusses and beams for office towers, hospitals, bridges, arenas - the last word in automation over the past several years has been the CNC beam drill line. A beam drill line is a machine tool that uses a conveyor to move a steel beam or "girder"into position, then drills holes - specifically bolt holes - in various locations along the steel piece, following the details provided in an engineering drawing of what the end product is to be.

An automated beam drill line is a big step in efficiency, compared to the traditional way of making various measurements on the bare beam to mark it as indicated by the engineering drawing, then drilling the holes manually - typically using a standard drill press. This time-consuming approach was an all manual process.

The Computer-Numerical-Controlled (CNC) beam drill line can download the digital drawing file, assess exactly where the holes belong, "probe" the beam using the drill head and positioners, then drill through the steel at very high speeds using super-hard carbide drill bits and cutting fluids. The bolt holes are made seemingly in the "blink of an eye" and most of the labor is getting the on and off the line and uploading the digital drawing into the machine's software.

That's a huge advantage over the "old fashioned" method, but there's a certain limitation, and it's a pretty important one. THERE ARE TYPICALLY MANY MORE MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS THAT MUST BE DONE ON THE STEEL BEAM. Cutting different features (such as copes, notches, bevels) into the , trimming off the end of the section to get it to the required length, and "scribing" different characters and symbols into the workpiece are additional operations typically required on many steel beams. How many of these can be performed by a CNC beam drill line? Sadly, none of them.

In summary, while a beam drill line boosts productivity of drilling bolt holes, it doesn't automate any of these other tasks.

A radically different fabrication method has come to the fabrication industry that performs hole drilling operation just as fast and accurately as the beam drill line, but performs a comparable level of automation to the many additional operations done to structural beams. It uses high-definition plasma cutting to thermally cut through or scribe the steel.

This technology is similar to the beam drill line in that the steel is transferred into the plasma torch vicinity, the digital file containing all the feature information is loaded into the plasma machine's PC-based control system, and the cutting torch tip touches the workpiece to figure out (and remember) precisely where it's located and envelope and surface features. Then the plasma torch starts cutting bolt holes . . . and notches, copes, cutouts, bevel cuts, miter cuts . . . the full range of operations associated with structural steel fabrication.

The automated plasma cutting machines can produce all these needed features, going from one side of the beam to the other side. When it's done, all the needed operations are finished - there's no need to move the steel piece to another operation. The plasma machines are kind of a "one stop shop" for fabricators.

Different versions of these plasma machines are coming on the market, with a variety of capacities and prices. As for the venerable beam drill line . . . the heyday of beam drill line technology has come and is on its way out.

There's a lot more info here: The Demise of the Beam Drill Line?
How To Cope Steel Beams - Completey Automated

About the Author

I'm a writer and blogger specializing in explaining new manufacturing technology that exists in one sector, but that holds promise for application in other sectors. Boring stuff, yes, but useful for the cross-pollenization of ideas.