CNC drilling for steel beams and plate
Nothing delays a steel erection like holes that do not line up. CNC drilling exists to make sure that never happens, and it is the reason a frame can be bolted together in an hour rather than reamed out over a day.
The problem with marking out by hand
Hand marking accumulates error. Measure from one end, mark, punch, drill, repeat, and by the tenth hole in a long beam the position has drifted. Do that on two mating members and the bolts do not go through.
The site fix is to ream the holes oversize, which weakens the connection and is not what the engineer designed. It is also slow and it happens at the worst possible moment, with a crane waiting.
How CNC changes it
The hole positions come from the fabrication drawing as data. The machine positions and drills from the same datum every time, so every hole in every member is where the model says it is, to a fraction of a millimetre.
It also means repeat members are genuinely identical. On a job with twenty matching beams, that consistency is what keeps the erection sequence moving.
What we drill
Beams and columns for bolted connections, base plates, end plates, cleats, splice plates, flange holes for purlin cleats, and holes for services penetrations where the engineer has approved them.
Web penetrations are worth flagging: holes through a beam web have to be positioned and sized by the engineer, since they affect the beam's capacity. We will not put a services hole in a beam without that approval.
Working with your drawings
Send the engineer's drawings or the fabrication model and we produce the shop drawings for approval before cutting. That approval stage is where most errors are caught, and it costs nothing compared with discovering a problem on site.
Drilling is done in house in Dublin 22 alongside cutting, folding and welding.
Want this priced for your own job? Send us your drawings or a photo and we will come back with a fixed price, usually within one working day.
Common questions
Need this done properly? Talk to the workshop.
Send us drawings, a sketch or a site photo. We come back with a fixed price and a firm lead time, usually within one working day.