Page 23 - UK Standard Products Catalogue 2018_23.10.18

The Aluminium Process. The Aluminium Production Line.
Valmont aluminium columns are formed via cold tapering. A rendering furnace, where the rough tapered tubes are
heated for 6 hours to acquire the mechanical strength fixed
After the aluminium tubes have been received and stocked by our technical specifications. The products are checked
in the production workshop, the tubes are then cut to length as they leave the furnace to ensure that our products are well
according to the technical specifications of the products to above minimum values.
be manufactured, and automatically put into a storeroom for
rough products. When they leave the storeroom, the tubes After cooling, the tapered tubes are straightened and sent to
are automatically taken to the tapering machine. the polishing line. 2 polishing operations are performed on
2 specific machines: the first gives a rough polish and the
second carries out the finishing, which gives the end product
that brushed and polished appearance.

The next stage is cutting the door. The tapered tube is held in
clamps and a horizontal saw with a thin band saw blade does
the cutting. Thus the door is perfectly adjusted in relation to
the shape cut in the column. On the same machine, we
reinforce the opening if necessary. This operation consists of
expanding a strengthening tube inside the pole.

The last stage on this line is welding the base plates; this is
The tapering operation consists of cold embossing the raw done by qualified welders.
tubes to give them the required shape. This process is
called cold spinning treatment.)

This spinning machine is made of a broach and a tailstock,
which turns the raw shaft, then a shaping carriage made up
of specific rollers moves along it and models the product
following the technical specifications programmed into the
machine.

Depending on the size of the end products, 1, 2, 3 or 4 can
be made from one raw shaft. Once tapered, the raw shaft
is moved to a saw bench where it will be cut to length. This
whole tapering process is entirely automatic: the 3D product The column thus produced are moved to a storage zone
models made by our design department are directly sent to within the factory.
the machine’s digital controls; the operator checks the data
and then launches the production process. Access doors are equipped and assembled.

This expertise and the machine’s technical abilities allow us Any specific operations seen to be necessary are performed,
to produce complex shapes and obtain large tapering ratios. followed by the final control before individual packing and
sending them to the client, putting them in stock or sending
them for painting on our powder coating line.