Southern Metal Fabricators Inc., a custom metal fabricator with capabilities ranging from copper to stainless steel fabrication and more, has opened a new wing at its facility in Albertville, Alabama. This marks an additional 30,000 sq. ft. to its shop floor, most of which is devoted to an automated finishing operation. This allows the company to bring all blasting and painting for its custom fabricated ducts, tanks and carts in-house.
At the heart of the new finishing operation is a massive, controlled, automated paint booth that can accommodate large roller carts, which are used to wheel products such as carbon and stainless steel storage tanks in and out of the booth. Automated sprayers hit inserted products from all directions at once. Following paint application, the controlled environment inside the booth rapidly dries products, reducing dry times from two days to two hours in some cases.