We were recently contacted by a customer for steel plate rolling that required multi-radius bending. Optimation was making a 10-foot-tall sculpture that replicated their logo, two O’s leaning against each other at an angle. Their design was for hollow stainless steel O’s to be constructed by cutting offset ellipses to make the faces out of plate. Rolling of 16″ wide stainless plate to match the outside and inside of each O face was then required to create the structures. Here are pictures of the faces as well as the initial fitment check:
While in early design phases, Chicago Metal Rolled Products was contacted and worked with their designers to ensure the best and most efficient production process. The customer originally planned on acquiring the faces through other sources. We suggested purchasing the faces so we could use them as templates to make the curved plates. We would do the initial fit-up at our shop, stitch weld it all together, and ship it to our customer to do the detailed finishing work.
This process served two main purposes: it guaranteed that the plates we rolled would match the faces they were using, and it provided stability to the curved plates so they wouldn’t be damaged in shipping. We manufactured each O in two pieces to reduce material waste, to avoid the need of longer and more costly material, and to avoid over-width shipping. Here you can see a picture of Chicago Metal’s welding together of the multi-radius plates as well as three of the completed half O’s in our shop:
The second part of the sculpture to be made was the base that the O’s would actually be standing on. A ½” thick by 16” wide smaller ellipse was required to be the base as well as a ½” thick segment that matched the outside ellipses on the O’s to act as cradles. These would ensure the O’s were sturdy and tilted at the required angle. The O’s were shipped to the customer to begin their fabrication as soon as they were completed. Shortly after, the base pieces were shipped separately. Here is a picture of the base assembled but unfinished at the customer’s facilities:
The customer fabricated everything together from the pieces we had sent them. Final touches including sandblasting and polishing were done on the pieces before finally erecting the sculpture in front of their plant:
