In 2008, the Focchi company, a well-known architectural works specialist, turned to Bipres to produce their aluminium double-curved sail-shaped cladding.
Designed for a building of high architectural value in downtown London, the cladding was a challenge to produce because few pieces were required and we had to keep costs down.
We ended up devising an extremely cost-effective way to perfectly create the sail shapes:
- gluing of wood blocks
- creation of female wood shapes, using 3-D CAD-CAM system and Soraluce Sp 10000 machining centre (table size 10 m x 1.2 m)
- stamping with rubber punch
- TIG welding of wedges
In normal circumstances, these elements would have been built with a die-stamping process and an upfront investment of nearly 300,000 €, but with our cycle the investment was just 20,000 €.
