UAE fabricators hail breakthrough in cladding technology

Two of the first UAE companies to acquire it, Arabian Profile of Sharjah and Al Abbar Aluminium of Dubai, claim a phenomenal increase in production capacity. The AXYZ PanelBuilder combines a triple-spindle router system with breakthrough software, both custom-made for the cladding market. The multi-headed hardware massively outperforms conventional single-headed machines while the system software slashes drawing and programming schedules. The benefits for ACM (Aluminium Composite Material) fabricators are enormous, as are the financial savings. The panels no longer have to be moved from one station to another and the system completely eliminates a multitude of time consuming manual tasks. The triple spindle router can groove, drill and cut out the finished panel in one seamless action, leaving the panel ready to be folded. Newly launched in the Gulf, the first companies to acquire PanelBuilder´s customized cladding technology have given it unprecedented accolodes. Rashid Al Abbar, Chairman of the Al Abbar Group, said: ´In construction, like any other field, technology is always improving but it is usually small steps at a time, PanelBuilder is a giant leap forward. Rarely have we encountered a system which has had such an immediate impact on our efficiency. From an economic standpoint, this is one of the best investments we have ever made.´ ´This system offers up almost limitless design opportunities as well as saving an enormous amount of time,´ said Director Harald Halvorsen. ´Our productivity has increased five-fold since we acquired PanelBuilder.´ The PanelBuilder software package is a true industry innovation, drastically reducing the front-end drawing and programming time required to create the NC (Numerical Code) that drives the router. The software allows a CAD operator to simultaneously create both the panel blanks and the associated NC toolpaths. Before PanelBuilder, every single panel variation required its own individual template. With conventional CNC systems, the long lead time involved in creating a separate program for each panel type represents a laborious task and huge time commitment, particularly on larger projects. Nick Jenkins, Facades Division Manager of Euroclad, explained: ´Creating CNC programs used to take up most of our draughtsmen´s time. With PanelBuilder they can do it much, much quicker. The nesting capability helps us to reduce sheet wastage too. The system has helped boost our productivity enormously and made our operation much more efficient. PanelBuilder has the potential to revolutionize our industry.´ PanelBuilder´s creator, Stuart Kriskinans, said the system had received wide acclaim in the U.S and Europe but he believed the Gulf and wider Middle East could be the most lucrative market to date. ´You only need to look at the size of the projects over here to see the potential. A good-sized project in the U.K would be 5,000 panels. Here it´s 30,000 panels, so the payback time is shorter than anywhere else in the world. The response so far has been excellent. Apart from Al Abbar and Arabian Profile, we have also sold machines to Technical Glass of Sharjah, Alutec of Doha and ALICO, Kuwait. The industry has recognized this as a genuine breakthrough and that´s always exciting,´ he says. ´We´ve made things possible that were not possible before. The great strength of PanelBuilder is that it was configured specifically for the needs of the cladding industry. That is what makes it unique. There were not many triple-headed machines in the world to begin with - and certainly none with the software and cutting capabilities of this system.´ ´With traditional one-carriage machines, the tools have to be changed between each job. That is the traditional process and it´s a process that spells downtime. With a three-headed machine you can V-groove, drill the holes in the corners and cut the outside edge of the whole panel all in one go. Everything is covered.´ Kriskinans predicts that vertical panel saws will soon be consigned to the scrapheap. ´Anyone who buys one now is buying yesterday´s technology´, he says ´They are so labour intensive and involve so many problems. Speed, accuracy, consistency and depth of cut - none of these are guaranteed. But with PanelBuilder, the results are perfect every time.´ He added: ´When we started out on this project we looked at all existing CNC technology and computer packages, and while many were commendable, none provided an industry-specific system tying all the required functionality together into a seamless package. That´s what we set out to achieve and the response from the ACM market has been overwhelming. Introducing PanelBuilder to the booming Gulf construction industry is definitely a case of the right product in the right place at the right time.´