Cutting or molding?
State-of-the-art technology
As the construction market is being reformed, a number of construction organizations seeking to increase the competitive ability of their products not only by lowering the price, but also by improving the quality of construction products (materials and finished facilities), is increasing. These combinations of accumulated experience in development of new equipment and technologies indicate that one of the promising areas for improving quality and efficiency of products is introduction of cutting technology for the following main reasons:
- Strength gain of a material in a massif (volume of a mold is 1.47 m3) is much more intensive due to separation and preservation of heat during cement hydration, which provides higher strength characteristics of products.
- Cutting technology ensures manufacturing of products with accuracy of geometric dimensions of ± 1 mm and surface quality that meets standards, which makes it possible to perform masonry using special adhesives and significantly increases heat efficiency of external walls.
- The cutting complex allows you to produce products of different sizes; there is no such possibility with usage of cassette molds, because the size of resulting blocks is limited by the size of cells of the mold.
- Economic efficiency.
Developing the cutting technology in production of building materials, such as foam concrete, aerated concrete, and polystyrene concrete, specialists of our company have designed the new RK-3 cutting complex. Usage of the cutting complex contributes to achievement of a direct economic effect due to the following factors:
- reduction of labor costs in manufacturing of products (the complex is maintained by only 2 people). For example, for maintenance of a park of metal cassette forms (assembly, dismantling, cleaning, and lubrication) at a capacity of 20 m3 of products per shift, it will take at least 6-8 people;
- having compared capital investments during usage of metal cassette molds and usage of the cutting complex, we find out that when an enterprise with capacity of 20 m3 per shift is equipped with cassette molds at an average market cost of about 60,000 rubles per m3 of molds, an investment of 1,200,000 rubles would be required. The cost of the RK-3 cutting complex is 350,000 rubles, molds for pouring massifs with a volume of 1.47 m3 in the amount of 14 pieces at the price of 24,000 rubles per piece will cost 336,000 rubles (it is possible to reduce investments into molds by manufacturing of mold by own means according to drawings).
As a result, you get the savings of 514,000 rubles and ability to manufacture products of higher quality.
The resource of saw blades directly depends on type and properties of raw materials used and is 10,000-12,000 sq. m of cut on the average.
It is also necessary to mention the following:
- percentage of defective finished products when using cassette molds is much higher;
- consumption rate of formwork lubrication when using metal cassette molds is more than five times higher; and
- contrary to the assurances of equipment sellers concerning "eternity" of metal cassette molds, their service life is very limited. The fact is that when working with such molds, it is necessary to adhere the culture of production. In practice as well, assembly and disassembly of molds is done using improvised means (hammer, sledgehammer, crow bar, etc.) resulting in metal deformation, which leads to significant deviations in geometric sizes of manufactured products and impossibility of further operation of a mold.