Angle Ring finds perfect formula for Abu Dhabi landmark
Abu Dhabi isn’t just the climax of the Formula One season, it also represents a pinnacle of achievement for Tipton-based steel bending firm Angle Ring who recently executed a contract worth over a quarter of a million pounds for bending large diameter steel tubes for the Yas Island Hotel, which forms the centrepiece of the Formula One circuit.
A Challenging Series of Bends
Working closely with one of its major European customers, Angle Ring supplied the complex hot bent tubes, some up to an amazing 80mm in thickness, for the ground-breaking structure of the hotel, the only 5-star hotel in the world to actually straddle a Grand Prix circuit, offering guests a breathtaking and unprecedented view of the race.
In all, over 150 tonnes of tubes were imported from the Czech Republic for bending on Angle Ring’s own custom-designed and built hot bending machine, the only one of its kind in Europe for curving such massive steel components.
A Race Against Time
The bending of the components themselves is only part of the story because Angle Ring’s export team also had to work out how to get the huge bent tubes, each almost ten metres long and weighing in at over five tonnes, to Abu Dhabi in time for erection. Such were the time pressures in fact that several of the finished pieces were actually flown out to the Middle East on 747 jumbo jet cargo planes.
Team Effort
Export Manager Samantha Baker, who has been with the company for over thirty years, explained the successful completion of one of the most exciting and challenging projects Angle Ring has ever been involved with by remarking: “Rather as in the world of Formula One, at Angle Ring our success is never down to one individual or even one department.
It was the all-round team effort involving the company’s highly-skilled workforce, the talents of our in-house technical department and, of course, the ingenuity of our export team that kept the project on track with delivery ahead of schedule and each one of the huge tubes slotting perfectly into position. Other UK and European companies have attempted this type of bending work but none as successfully as Angle Ring”.
MANY YEARS ON THE CIRCUIT
Founded back in 1951,The Angle Ring Company is Europe’s market leader in the bending of steel sections, plate and tube with the largest steel bending range in the UK taking in section bending, press braking, plate rolling, heavy plate forming, tube manipulation, pipe forming and 3-D bending. In the 1970s, Angle Ring’s in-house -designed steel bending, steel forming and cambering machines enabled the company to pioneer the bending of structural sections on the major axis and the hot bending of structural sections, facilitating the production of smooth, accurate bends for architectural steelwork while maintaining section geometry.
For years Angle Ring has been a significant contributor to a whole host of prestigious and innovative architectural projects in the UK, Europe and worldwide. With the completion of the Yas Island Hotel, the company now looks forward to future involvement in other similarly exciting and challenging projects, having just been awarded the contract for hot bending over 200 tonnes of large diameter steel tubes for a new footbridge in Eastern Europe