Fabricator transforms from job shop to structural job shop

Nashville Fabrication fabricates 15 to 20 miles of handrail sets annually. Each handrail set comprises multiple levels of tube and posts—equally more than 50 miles of tube per year. Most of the handrail sets are erected in large distribution centers around the 48 contiguous states. The company also fabricates the stairs and erected the stairs and handrails in at least 25 of them.

When Nashville Fabrication founder Andy Hobbs began fabricating out of a 100-square-foot area of his grandfather's warehouse in 2005, work was good but slow.

Even after he and his partner bought a 25,000-sq.-ft. building in 2007 to launch Nashville Fabrication officially, they and their employees were fabricating manually and laboriously—measuring parts with a tape measure, setting hard stops for tube assembly saddles, and using a belt sander as a notcher.

Since 2010 the fabricator has been transitioning from a small, light fab job shop into a powerhouse fabricator by continually adding more CNC and automated heavy fabrication machinery and increasing the workforce—and with Andy's wife, Jennifer, buying out her husband's partner and becoming his business partner in 2015.

Today the company supplies hundreds of miles of tube and pipe that become handrails and steel stair stringers in the nation's largest online retailer distribution centers. "We have fabricated for distribution centers for most of the 48 contiguous states," Andy said.

With every new fabrication machinery installation, the company transitioned from a small, light tube fabricator to a significant, heavy metal fabricator. About 70 percent of the work it performs is up to 11/2-inch-thick-wall and up to 20-in. square tube and pipe or plate-thick parts.

Company President Jennifer Hobbs is the operations manager, and she has been involved in the business "from the get-go. I would come over and run machinery, paint, handle financials—whatever was needed. It's been a family affair," she said. Jennifer completed her AWS welder certification in December 2018. Her hands-on familiarity with the operations has equipped her to help estimate job costs and billing.

Jennifer said that while large structural fabricators and steel service centers measure their production volume in tons, Nashville Fab calculates its volume in labor-hours. "We have to know how many hours we’re putting in a job. We look at how many hours it takes to get something done, and that's also how we evaluate automated equipment purchases to increase our productivity."

Andy added, "We’re like everyone else you talk to. We don't have enough staff."

With every automated machinery installation, the fabricator expanded capacity and throughput.

1. Small Tube Cutting, Marking Machine. The first round tube CNC machine that the company purchased was a Bend-Tech Dragon tube cutting and marking system.

Nashville Fabrication President Jen Hobbs and founder Andy Hobbs have grown their company exponentially since it launched in earnest only nine years ago. Jen earned her AWS welder certificate a few months ago.

The machine was a manifestation of software written for mandrel benders for pipe and tubing, Andy said. "It complemented their software. It was really geared toward roll cage guys making dune buggies, things like that. It was the best $20,000 I’ve ever spent," he said.

In 2018 Bend-Tech produced an updated version, a Dragon A400 CNC tube/pipe plasma cutter and notcher for cutting, engraving, and marking, and Nashville Fab bought that as well.

One operator runs that machine. "She takes the drawings and inputs them manually. It's rudimentary; we don't offline program it because she's so efficient at it. She can literally overwhelm the shop, by herself, with parts. She rarely makes errors." The parts always fit well and they’re ready to weld with almost zero cleanup because the flash from the plasma is on the inside of the pipe, which doesn't show, Andy said.

"The Dragon is like having two or three people who just cope and cut it to length all day," Andy said. "It is exponentially faster than how we used to process. We had used only hand processes and were using a belt notcher to put saddles in our tubing. I wanted to eliminate anything really laborious that I could. That machine essentially does all of that."

2. CNC Thermal Plasma Cutting/Coping Machine. The first CNC structural steel fabrication equipment Nashville Fab purchased was a Peddinghaus Ring of Fire 500 CNC thermal cutting/coping machine.

"We were struggling with processing the stairs and the stair stringers," Andy said. "The two stair components are made from a C-channel, and almost every cut is a miter cut. And then, inevitably, every one of them needs a partial weld, so it needs to be beveled for weld prep. So, what we tried to find was a machine that would cut the miters, cut the bevels, and put holes in for the bolts and bolt connections," Andy said.

"And so I kind of saw that as a silver bullet. It's not exactly a silver bullet, but I would say it's as close to one as we could have gotten," he said.

The Ring of Fire was engineered to cope and cut structural steel shapes and square tube. Nashville Fabrication uses it to fabricate the stair stringers.

"The advantage of thermal cutting is speed. We can cut it to length probably twice as fast as we can saw it." Andy acknowledged that the plasma deposits some slag, but said that it is insignificant.

The machine's major advantage for Nashville Fab, though, is its ability to cut and cope 360 degrees. "It was pretty ahead of its time. To this day, the most important feature of our machine is that it can cut an entire tube all the way around with a single pierce," Andy said.

He said that, in his experience, an industrial robot cannot cut all the way around the tube or pipe uninterrupted. "They can only cut three sides and then they have to stop to finish. What that does is, you get a discontinuity between the cuts, and you cannot get a perfectly clean cut on the end of the tube. It can be up to a quarter of an inch off."

The first CNC structural steel fabrication equipment Nashville Fab purchased was a Peddinghaus Ring of Fire 500 CNC thermal cutting/coping machine.

That continuity can be critical for fit-up, he said. "We cut a lot of tubular stair columns that have to sit squarely on the base plate. With the Ring of Fire, we have no fit-up problems."

The fabricator is happy about another capability the machine has that is a huge time-saver. "We can actually cut to length and bevel at the same time, so we can do weld prep on the tube while we’re cutting it to length."

The fabricator processes some 12-, 14-, even 16-in. columns, 3/16- to 1-in.-thick wall. It has cut up to 2-in.-thick material. "Before we had this, we were using a saw for cut to length. But you’re limited on the angles that you can saw. Steep compound angles are out," Andy said. "There is no limitation on the angles you can cut with the thermal machine."

He added that the company struggled for the first couple of months of operation with programming it, getting it to run as they wanted, but Peddinghaus worked with them to get it right. "Their customer service is second to none. They always responded immediately, got us parts, whatever we needed to get it up and running."

Andy said, "So we have our big giant coping machine, the Ring of Fire, and then we have our little baby coping machine, which is our Dragon. We’ve got a lot of fire. Both these machines have run 18 hours a day for years."

Bringing in the fire wasn't cheap, the Hobbses said. "At first the purchase price was a very hard pill to swallow. Oh my gosh, that was a huge deal for us," Jennifer said. "But we have no regrets whatsoever," she added. "We’ve had it for five years and we run it every day."

Jennifer said that the machine purchases were cost-justified by how many labor-hours they saved. "We’ve got one guy to operate the Ring of Fire and it does the work of eight operators. The Dragon does the work of three. So that justified our costs."

3. Single-spindle Drilling Machine. In 2015 Nashville Fabrication purchased and installed an Ocean Avenger Plus 1250/1C single-spindle carbide drill line. It is a horizontal CNC multitasking machine that processes various profiles, including beams, angle, channel, plate, flat bar, T-sections, square and rectangular structural tubing, girders, and tapered beams.

It is equipped with an eight-tool automatic tool changer that facilitates faster drilling, part marking, scribing layouts for welded attachments, milling of slots and machining surfaces, flow drilling, and counterboring and countersinking.

Andy said that although the drilling machine is not the most efficient for running beams, it is useful because it can drill many different sizes. "It gives us the ability to tap, drill, cope, countersink … we can do all of that."

Nashville Fab's renown has grown with its capabilities, capacity, and production throughput, positioning it for large and trophy projects such as the Nashville Sounds stadium, home of Nashville's Triple-A baseball team. The fabricator manufactured and installed the railings and processed the parts for the trusses and even the guitar-shaped scoreboard.

The company also has two Peddinghaus angle machines for punching holes in plate and angles. "They’re the most efficient way possible to put a hole in a piece of angle or a piece of flat bar. So we have those for that," Andy said.

4. Robotic Cell. The company recently purchased another CNC machine, a Cloos Qirox QR-CC-4.1 compact robotic welding cell. It is a ready-to-weld system equipped with a two-station workpiece positioner with vertical change and vertical rotation. It provides excellent welding results, reduces secondary processing times, and speeds the entire process run, Jennifer said. "This will increase our speed of high-volume welded assemblies, and should increase efficiency exponentially. Initially we are going to utilize the machine to weld concrete form assemblies and eventually our stair treads," she added.

Although about 80 percent of the company's past few years of work has been for the large structural steel fabricators supplying the online retailer distribution center industry, at the company's core, it is a job shop. "We never know what we’re going to need, so what we use has to be versatile," Andy said.

"We built a pipe rack last year to go over the roof of the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala." The system carries the process water and power to the newly added million-plus-square-foot body shop. Nashville Fabrication fabricated and installed 1,200 ft. of pipe rack across the roof of the facility without halting its operation.

"We’re still a job shop doing miscellaneous work. One week we’ll be making stairs for distribution centers, and then the next week we’ll be making a pipe rack to go over an automotive assembly plant," Andy said.

The company is in the process of moving to a new facility three times its current size on a 22-acre parcel for future expansion.

The fabricator has purchased two mobile cranes and has developed the erecting aspect of the structural steel business. "We’ve got a large group of field welders and ironworkers, and we erect a portion of what we fabricate. We might have four different jobs running at a time," Jennifer said.

Growth trends of purchases from online retailers show no signs of waning, so the future of fabricating and erecting stairs and railings for Nashville Fabrication looks bright.

"One of those distribution center's jobs takes us about three to four months to complete," Andy said.

Andy and Jennifer are convinced that if not for their expanded production capacity and ability to process large volumes of tube, pipe, and plate, they would not have obtained their enviable distribution center projects.

An operator runs the Dragon A400 CNC tube/pipe plasma cutter and notcher for cutting, engraving, and marking, one of the first automated machines the fabricator installed.

"If we didn't have those three machines, we would probably be a $5 million instead of a $10 million-annual-revenue company," Andy said.

"We are where we are because of our abilities, workforce, and capacity."

He added, "You know, 30 years ago, not many people had an automated anything, but now, if you don't have some kind of automation, you’re in the back seat. You’ve got to stay in front."

Nashville Fabrication, www.nashvillefab.com

Bend-Tech, www.bend-tech.com

Ocean Machinery, www.oceanmachinery.com

Peddinghaus, www.peddinghaus.com