These are a few of our favorite things: Composite Architectural Surface

These are a few of our favorite things: Composite Architectural Surface

When Symmetrix Composite Tooling shapes a job, it eventually takes a recognizable shape. It could be the deck of a boat, or the root end of a wind turbine, or maybe the inverse of bus body, but eventually, it’s a recognizable carved shape. One of the more interesting jobs this year, a fiberglass architectural surface, looked like, well, I’m not sure I could put a word to it.

Which is probably a good thing, considering the secrecy surrounding the job. Symmetrix was contacted by an architect in early 2015. He had designed a modern house with lines that mimicked the surrounding dunes. Traditional building methods would not work. Their solution was to construct fiberglass panels and install them over steel framing. These shapes were so random, so “swoopy”, they thought maybe our CAD/CAM driven CNC machine could help.

And we could. Symmetrix’s engineers took the client’s CAD drawings – long, curved shapes – and determined how best to divide the pieces both for production and shipping purposes. They designed a pattern off of which the FRP tooling could be constructed. There were many variables – certain areas were needed first, some corners would be too tight for our machine to cut, or to difficult to lay fiberglass. The bizarre shapes were twisted and turned, perfect for fiberglass application. When the pieces were finished, we had 17 twisty-curvy parts, almost 200 square meters, that exceeded the customer’s expectations.

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Symmetrix Composite Tooling is a full service composite tooling manufacturer of complex and innovative design that prides itself on precision and quality.