Aluhak is a manufacturer of scaffolding with a focus on the offshore industry. The company’s head office is located in Bryne, just south of Stavanger, the Norwegian oil industry capital. The people here have a lot of ideas on how the products should be developed in order to become even more competitive. The ideas, in the form of thoughts and sketches, are then conveyed to Sapa Innovation Center, a close cooperation partner to Aluhak.
- When we switched from our Norwegian supplier of aluminium profiles and chose Sapa instead, we got somewhat lower prices, but this was by no means the decisive factor, says Alberth Jonassen, the Managing Director. Our choice depended completely on the fact that we wanted to have access to the competence offered by Sapa.
- We are a small company without our own development resources. Our knowledge about the profile technology and aluminium is limited. We have simply insufficient knowledge about the properties of aluminium.
At the same time we want to have front-edge products. This is why we have chosen Sapa as our supplier and let their technicians have a full access to our development process.
For reasons of ergonomics Aluhak wants to sell products which weigh as little as possible. A platform (aluminium profile) used in construction scaffolding should not weigh more than 20 kilos, but Aluhak has some platforms which weigh 23 kilos. The platforms are slightly more that 650 mm wide and the length is 3000 mm. According to the standards in force, the deflection in the middle may not exceed 25 mm. It is a challenge in itself. But many of Aluhak’s customers think that 25 mm is too large a deflection. They do not feel completely safe when the platform bends so much and it goes without saying that a customer who chooses construction scaffolding from Aluhak should feel safe.
The task for Sapa’s technicians: the weight must be reduced and the deflection must be smaller. And this was supposed to be achieved with a profile where the possibilities of the profile technology had already been taken advantage of and the fact that the modulus of elasticity of aluminium is three times as low as that of steel had been taken into account.
The FEM (the Finite Element Method) is a powerful aid in calculating and optimising strength. It proved very useful, just like the collected experience of Sapa’s technicians. At Sapa Innovation Center we work in teams and in this way we are able to take advantage of the special competence of the individual team members.
The new profile is now on its way to the market.
- We are satisfied with the cooperation. Sapa understands what we are after. Communication is important in this kind of cooperation and it works fine. In total we buy about 60 different cross-sections from Sapa in the form of fabricated profiles which go directly to our production process.
The Aluhak project is an example of how companies, through Sapa Innovation Center, can in a structured way get access to Sapa’s collected knowledge in such fields as aluminium and profiles, engineering and design, calculation, production of prototypes, fabrication, logistics, experiments and testing.
Text: lg.linden/text
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