By Roy Valentine
Industrial CNC Sales Manager
Techno, Inc., New Hyde Park, NY

Diversification opens door to new opportunities

X2 US, based in Powhatan, VA, together with its Dutch sister company X kwadraat, won the bidding to fabricate and install the New Amsterdam Pavilion near Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. The 56-foot flower-shaped building, a gift from the government of the Netherlands to the City of New York, commemorated the 400th anniversary of Captain Henry Hudson’s arrival in Manhattan. The pavilion was officially unveiled last year by Prince Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands.

In winning the bid, X2 proposed a tubular steel structure topped with a network of wooden ribs covered with two layers of bent plywood and coated with polyurea to realize architect Ben van Berkel’s vision. Van Berkel, who designed the structure, heads the Dutch firm UN Studio.

When X2 started operations three years ago, it was primarily a metal shop but this project spurred the company to expand into woodworking. Without computer numerical control (CNC), X2 would have had to cut 160 sheets of plywood by hand to make the ribs but discovered it would have taken months to complete the job manually. So the company decided to automate and purchased a Techno LC Series model 4896 CNC router and completed the job in seven working days, reducing costs and helping to meet project deadlines. X2 has since used the router for several other projects, allowing the company to service both customer metalworking and woodworking requirements.

Cutting the Ribs in a Fraction of the Time

The complexity of the ribs made them too difficult to cut directly by hand. Instead the company would have had to make templates and cut the pieces by hand with a jigsaw. “It’s difficult to even estimate the amount of time that would have been required,” Bob Post, vice president and general manager of X2, said. Instead, a designer defined the geometry for the ribs in IronCAD computer aided design (CAD) software and loaded them into Visual Mill, the CNC programming software used by the company. The ribs were nested with between six and eight ribs per sheet of plywood in order to obtain the most efficient use of the material. Only one worker was needed on an occasional basis to load and unload the plywood sheets on the CNC router. The company assembled the structure by applying two layers of bendable plywood over the ribs, adding a rubber substrate base, then spraying on a polyurea coating.

Symbol of Dutch-American Friendship

In December 2008 The Netherlands awarded the Battery Conservancy a grant to design and construct the New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion as a permanent symbol of 400 years of Dutch-American friendship. The structure was developed as the centerpiece of Peter Minuit Plaza, an intermodal transportation hub where bicycles, buses, subway and water transportation all intersect. This destination is, in the words of architect van Berkel, “the ideal site for a permanent commemoration of 400 years of Dutch history in New York, because it is steeped in a sense of a shared past and looks directly toward the harbor where Henry Hudson sailed, but is also entirely focused on the future by virtue of its role as a modern transportation hub within the constantly changing scene of Lower Manhattan.”

The size of the project was a major challenge. The pavilion is so large that it had to be disassembled and shipped by truck to the building site. The entire project also had to meet New York City’s complicated building codes. The Battery Conservancy chose X2 US to fabricate and install the building. X2 pointed to cooperation with its Netherlands-based sister company on the project, saying it “exemplifies the reason for the gift of the pavilion, namely the inseparable link between the Netherlands and the United States.” X2’s mission in such complex projects is to bridge the gap between an architect’s design or concept and reality.

The Result of Diversification

X2 was originally formed primarily to build machine support frames for the semiconductor industry. These frames are built from welded tube steel, plates and concrete to support complex semiconductor equipment and prevent them from vibrating. The downturn in the semiconductor industry in recent years made it necessary for the company to seek business in other areas, leading to the New Amsterdam Pavilion project. When the company won the project it was focused almost entirely on metalworking. The first thought was to outsource the woodworking aspects of the project to its Dutch sister company, X kwadraat, which already had considerable woodworking equipment including a CNC router. But the project was on a tight schedule and there was concern that the project would have been at the mercy of shipping delays if this direction had been taken. Instead, X2 made the decision to develop an internal woodworking capability.

“Based on the experience of our sister company, we felt the key was the purchase of the right CNC router,” according to X2’s Post. “The type of projects that we are involved in typically require cutting of large numbers of wood pieces to high levels of accuracy. Cutting out these pieces on a jigsaw is very time-consuming and requires a considerable amount of skill. It is also very difficult to achieve the required level of accuracy with manual methods.

“CNC machining provides a quantum leap in performance by allowing designers to define the exact dimensions of every piece involved in the project using computer aided design software,” Post added. “Then the machine produces as many pieces as are needed with the exact dimensions as defined by the designer. The operator is required to load the program and workpiece but from that point can apply himself or herself to other tasks while the CNC machine does its job without any supervision. We investigated several different routers and selected the Techno’s LC4896 model.”

The LC Series machine from Techno Inc., New Hyde Park, NY, is equipped with ball screws on all three axes with closed loop servo motor drives. The high-tech drive system provides smooth play-free motion, which requires no adjustments and minimal maintenance. A closed loop servo control system provides constant position feedback, higher power, and smooth continuous motion that eliminate the possibility of losing position in the middle of a part, according to the company. The Techno servo system has the ability to cut 3D continuous contours at up to 800 inches per minute. The machine comes fully assembled and includes a Windows-based CNC G-code interface.

Expansion in Woodworking Planned

Since completing the New Amsterdam Pavilion project, X2 has used the CNC router on a number of other jobs including at least two prototypes. X2 also used the Techno router to make jigs that improved productivity and accuracy in welding the tubes that were used to make the steel structure of the pavilion. The company said that in the future it plans to expand its work in the woodworking area by producing more interiors such as laminate tops for commercial buildings and trade show exhibits and also more architectural models.

“The Techno CNC router has substantially increased the scope of our business by helping us deliver woodworking capabilities that match our already strong metalworking shop,” Post concluded. “The router has already paid for itself by reducing labor costs and lead-times on several critical projects. Most important, we can now offer our clients a full range of fabrication capabilities that will enable us to bid on and win a wider range of larger projects.”

Techno Inc.
2101 Jericho Turnpike
New Hyde Park, NY 11040
516-328-3970
www.technocnc.com

X2 US LLC
1560 Standing Ridge Drive
Powhatan, VA 23139
804-378-5020
www.x2us.com