Steel for Space Travel at NAFCO

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A family-driven company with an expertise in complex craftsmanship, North Alabama Fabricating Company (NAFCO) has increased their production by 500% in recent years. See how they fabricated and erected the 4,500 ton Marshall Space Flight Center.

Overall, NAFCO has worked on several major projects.

One that we are extremely proud of is two NASA test stands in Huntsville, Alabama, in which we were the fabricator and erector for the test stands that are part of the testing of the mission to Mars.

That had a tremendous amount of tubing. It took a tremendous amount of welled prep that was done by the Peddinghaus equipment, especially the coper.

It was about 4,500-ton project. So that was a really cool project. You don't get to do those very often.

We first looked at the Peddi XDM-630 at the NASCC show in 2016. We were looking for a coping machine and we walked out wanting to buy a Peddi XDM-630.

For the shop at Winfield, which is primarily our miscellaneous shop, the 24-inch maximum capability fit our specifications perfectly.

We had a limited amount of space in this shop. And that's a very--it has a very small footprint, that machine does. And so it really fit what we needed.

The major differences in production for us have been the ability to mill a lot of the copes and to go ahead and mill out some of the elongated holes that we needed within the specific products that we were running.

What made the machine stand out to me is its ability to mill. That saves us a tremendous amount of time and does a more excellent job, because that was still being done by hand.

Even with a coping machine, you can only get so close to the web of a beam, because the radius there just won't allow you to get very close.

This allows you to bring it right down like it's machined. And it saves us at least 20 minutes per cope. So if that's top and bottom at both ends, then of course that's 80 minutes of savings immediately, times over how many beams you got, and still doing a better job.

I think the most noticeable difference in the production is the efficiency. I mean, it seems to have sped the shop up. You know, it sped up the fitters.

Some of the other advantages of this machine is the accuracy of it, the speed of it, the saw being able to move, have a travel with it, so it can give me some miter cuts that I wasn't able to get before.

It also has a lot of safety features that I'm very interested in, that it's built around, because when you're milling, you are throwing shavings out. And it's a very safe machine.

This new technology will make us very competitive in the marketplace for which we are trying to utilize this shop capacity for.

What has been our strategy for remaining successful?

We try to make NAFCO a place to work that everybody is challenged, enjoys what they do, but is also supported. I know that is a goal of Peddinghaus, but it is as well for NAFCO.

We also believe in providing our clients with the best quality possible, and meeting their needs to the best ability that we can.