Advanced Cold-Formed Sections (ACFS) has maximised its levels of factory prefabrication, reduced fabrication time, improved quality, and saved significantly on material costs, following the installation of drilling and profiling lines from Wakefield-based
Ficep UK Ltd.
ACFS, which is based in Wolverhampton and part of the Metek group, manufactures light steel frames, stud and tracks, floor and mezzanine cassettes, and cladding rails — primarily for the residential, hotel and student accommodation markets.
The investment in two new Ficep systems — an Excalibur 12 drilling system and a Kronos 153 PC plasma profiler — comes as part of ACFS’s continued commitment to ‘driving innovation and meeting long-term sustainability objectives’. Oliver Rogan, ACFS’s owner, reports a 120% increase in output of materials and a significant reduction in welding time with 42% fewer welders needed to produce the company’s product range.
ACFS’s Excalibur CNC drilling system, which has an 18m bed, allows the company to carry out tasks including scribing, ID marking, notching and coping, as well as drilling and milling. According to Mr Rogan, the Excalibur alone enabled ACFS to process a record-breaking 60-tonne job in five days with only five welders. It also allowed the company to process beams that its stockholders were not able to process.
High level of accuracyThe new Kronos, which is a heavy-duty gantry-style thermal cutting system, gives ACFS the ability to make high-quality cuts to a high level of accuracy. This machine also generates plasma marks for the intersecting ‘match marker’ on the fittings, to enable the downstream fabricator to simply weld the parts together.
Furthermore, Ficep’s software interface on the Excalibur and Kronos CNC systems allows for remote diagnosis that allows Ficep’s service team to perform system diagnostics and routine checks. ACFS also specified the option of offline nesting software.
Mr Rogan added: “Our journey with Ficep has been far from typical, due to the restrictions brought about by the pandemic. We came to the market at the start of the pandemic and Ficep carried out the sales process in a virtual capacity. We had live online demonstrations from Ficep’s HQ in Italy and a virtual tour of one of its customer’s machines, which gave us the confidence to make this significant investment.”
Chris Berriman, Ficep UK’s sales manager, said: “ACFS is a brilliant example of a business that is daring to do things differently for the benefit of its customers and is reaping the rewards. We expected the systems would help them achieve the increases in productivity and reduction in waste that they aimed for, and we are pleased that they are going beyond ACFS’s expectations.”