My Peddinghaus Story - W.F. Welding - Nisku, Alberta

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In order to remain competitive in the evolving structural steel industry, fabricators understand the need for CNC technology. This "My Peddinghaus Story" features W.F. Welding in Alberta, Canada, where Ryan Schram and his team are cranking out production up to 20,000 tons per year using Peddinghaus machinery. See how their structural division remains a top player within Alberta's boom-bust cycle.

W.F. was founded in 1986 by four original owners, and W.F. has grown from that time of six employees in '86 to 170 now.

W.F. can run probably between 15,000 to 20,000 ton a year.

Our first Peddinghaus equipment showed up in 2005, so we were probably running closer to 3,000 to 5,000 tons a year at that time.

As everything has progressed, W.F. has--it's more like a 2/3 structural, and 1/3 cranes.

The one advantage we have is no other crane competitor around could justify this kind of equipment just for crane fabrication.

So they get an added bonus that they can use the equipment to the structural site needs for their crane product factory. Definitely gives them a competitive advantage.

The main benefit of the equipment for us is the speed and the accuracy, because we can run it from our modeling software, which is modeled one-to-one.

If it fits in the model, it's going to fit. It runs down the machine, it creates the files, it runs it out, and it's a true representation. The piece is there. The holes are in it.

Obviously, for our clients, the accuracy is important. Quality is a huge part of this industry.

I remember when we first got our plate machine, actually we had our training come in, and we're a little bit behind on plate nesting.

We're trying to learn how to nest plate on our new plate machine.

And we were doing a coal box, which was 35 foot by 35 foot base by 220 feet tall.

Heavy plate, heavy everything. And the guys were still laying these beams out, laying these columns out, laying these plates out by hand drilling.

And we ran those first batch of plates on that machine, and it was done in a shift.

We were done, all those splice plates It was an eye-opener for the shop for sure.

And then when the first beam line we ran our first piece of steel we were running heavy columns for a job.

And if I recall, they were inch and a quarter thick flanges. That guy would spend 12 hours drilling holes in every column by hand, and we could run a column through that machine in under an hour.

So, yeah, it was a game changer there.

The Peddinghaus machinery has been huge in the company expansion.

They are what you say--it was the game changer for us when we got the first machines almost 10 years ago, which allowed us to expand, become kind of what we are today and still expand, even in the marketplace as how it is.

The benefits of the new machines that we have over the previous ones is they operate a lot faster they're high speed machines.

There is more power in the plasma on the newer plate machine versus the original one that we had that was installed 10 years ago. And they can do a lot more.

I really believe without the Peddinghaus equipment we wouldn't be competitive enough to use the numbers we need to.

Alberta has a boom bust cycle. When you're in the valleys, margins get fairly tight, and if you didn't have this equipment, I don't think you could really compete.

So we've always been a fortunate company. We are willing to drop margins to keep guys working, and that's the mindset.

It's not a family company, but people do want to work here. The morale is high, and we continue on that way.

And I believe that pays dividends on both sides. And if people want to be here--and W.F. is blessed that way. We find work. We've always stayed busy.