Four huge precast factories in China equipped with Italian

The urbanization process currently underway in China is unique in history – both in terms of scale and speed. In the growing metropolitan areas affordable housing is in high demand and the prefabricated building system is the pre-ferred construction method. Giant Chinese real estate de-veloper My Home Group recently awarded AWM Spa to equip four new precast factories. The Italian manufacturer of high-quality machinery will deliver altogether 16 ma-chines for the processing and handling of two main rein-forcement elements needed for filigree slabs and double walls. Four machines have already been successfully put into operation at the first plant; the other twelve machines are currently being assembled. The urbanization process currently underway in China is, in terms of scale and speed, unique in history; medium to long-term forecasts suggest, with some confidence, that this pro-cess will continue unabated. Confirming this, the data on ce-ment consumption in China provided by both the National Bureau of Statistics of China and the US Geological Survey

reveal that this country used more concrete during the 3-year period from 2011 to 2013 (6.4 Gt) than the U.S. during the en-tire 20th century (4.56 Gt). In 2015, the data on the Chinese cement production matched even those of the rest of the world altogether. Besides the speed of implementation necessary to keep up with the large numbers of the urban growth, there is also the need to contain costs. Affordable housing is in high demand on the outskirts of the booming Chinese cities and in the growing metropolitan areas where the prefabricated building system is today the preferred construction method. This sys-tem complies with high construction standards and com-pared to conventional building systems allows cost and time savings. Proof of the advantages and the importance of this way of building is currently before our very eyes if we look at what happened in Wuhan in the Hubei Province, only a few months ago: due to the Covid-19 global health emergency an entire

PRECAST CONCRETE ELEMENTS

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Four huge precast factories in China equipped with Italian advanced reinforcement machinery

AWM Spa, 33010 Magnano in Riviera (Ud), Italy

Both meshes and lattice girders are produced just-in-time from wire on coils.

Bar preparation and positioning by the fully automatic mesh welding machine “Flexiweld”

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hospital, with a capacity of 1,000 beds, was built in a record time of ten days using modular elements that were first factory manufactured and then assembled on site. Massive precast projects planned The giant MyHome Group positions itself within the above scenario as one of the major China-based group corporations and as a leading enterprise engaging in real estate develop-ment (residential buildings, commercial buildings and office buildings, among others), construction and property manage-ment services. MyHome is headquartered in Wuhan and was founded in 1989. The Group’s activities extend from Wuhan and the related Hubei Province to Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Shenyang and other large cities across China. Driven by a rapid business growth the Group started a huge and strategic transformation during the past years. With a clear mission to make functional, stylish, and affordable houses quickly available to more people, a large number of precast factories was planned across China to support the modular construction projects. Considering the size of this massive and ambitious project, standardisation would definitely have been the key to achieve the goal. Right from the start, the group opted for a single construction method for every building in order to simplify on one hand the manufacturing process within the factories, on the other the on-site assembly operations. This was accom-plished by selecting two main types of precast elements: dou-ble walls for the vertical and filigree slabs for the horizontal components; this technology was imported from Europe and certified in China. Also, the layout of the precast factories has been planned to be similar to render both the purchase and the construction processes as easy as possible.


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Reinforcement machines produce ahead of the circulation plant’s needs. Automatic crane and buffer ensure a smooth flow of meshes under every circumstance.

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With its intelligent business orientation, the company turned to the highest quality suppliers of precast machinery and, around mid-2018, four fully-automated factories equipped with two production lines having a production capacity of eight pallets/hour each was awarded to Vollert for the circu-lation plants and to AWM Spa for all the steel reinforcement machinery. The two suppliers have a long-standing cooperation devel-oped over the years and throughout the world, combining their respective solid expertise in providing turnkey custom solu tions. The arrangement of all four factories is very compact and planned to take advantage of all available space while ensur-ing a fluid and safe flow not only of raw materials and finished products but also of the workers involved in the production cycle; in fact, maintenance, inspection, control and supervi-sion of the whole production chain are possible by means of walkways and raised platforms. Fully automatic customized equipment without compromises AWM provided customized cutting-edge equipment for pro-ducing and handling the two main reinforcement elements needed for filigree slabs and double-walls, that is to say, spe-cial meshes with openings and variable-height lattice girders. Since each of the four factories is composed of a double cir-culation plant, the supply in terms of reinforcement machinery is also doubled.

The entire machine list supplied by AWM consists of eight au-tomatic machines model “Flexiweld S” to produce special meshes, all equipped with the relevant mesh buffers and au-tomatic mesh handling cranes, eight automatic lattice girder machines model “Girderflex”, all equipped with automatic placing robots model “Autolayer” for handling and position-ing lattice girders, along with minor accessories. Digital production data is provided to the machines by the master computers of the factories that handle the BIM data of the elements and manage the flow of the circulation plants and the manufacturing schedules. With regard to special meshes, their production starts from coils of wire of different diameters that are first transformed into cut-to-length bars thanks to rotor straightening technol-ogy and flying shears and subsequently electro-welded at the appropriate distance, leaving out openings for doors and win-dows without any waste. Bespoke meshes are then moved along an exit bench by a pulling car and promptly collected by an automatic crane, equipped with special grippers, that drops them onto a buffer composed of several motorized drawers, each of them holding all the meshes needed for one pallet. Meshes are transferred again by the same crane from the buffer directly into the pallets following the assigned se-quence. Lattice girders are also produced from wire on coils and their length and height are adjusted just-in-time according to the features of each element. At the end of the line, finished gird-ers fall onto a buffer which is essentially a conveyor parallel


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As soon as the shutters are in place, the pallets of the circulation plant receive the main reinforcement elements automatically by AWM machines.

Detail of a filigree slab before concreting, with typical Z-bended wires protruding out of the shutters. Bent meshes with this shape are obtained in-line by the welding machine.


to the pallets of the circulation line. From here they are picked by the automatic handling robot in groups of five at one time and positioned precisely on the pallet. The robot can also turn the girders by 90° when necessary to comply with the required orientation of the girders in double walls. All machinery belonging to the first factory has been installed in Jingzhou and is currently in full production after the disrup-tion due to COVID-19. The remaining machines are currently being installed in the other locations, to successfully complete this extraordinary project. �


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AWM S.p.A. SS13, Km 146, 33010 Magnano in Riviera (Ud), Italy T +39 0432 780311 [email protected], www.awm.it

FURTHER INFORMATION

The “Autolayer” handling robot positioning lattice girders in the right spot on the pallet.

SOMMER Anlagentechnik GmbH Benzstrasse 1 | D-84051 Altheim/Germany

Tel: +49 (0) 87 03 / 98 91-0 | Fax: +49 (0) 87 03 / 98 91-25 [email protected] | www.sommer-precast.de

| Stationary line production | Tilting tables

| Pallet circulation plants | Transport and handling systems

| Multi-Function-Shuttering-Robot (MFSR) | Concrete distribution systems for all purposes

| Compacting systems | Finishing equipment | Shuttering systems

| Shuttering for special purpose elements | Moulds for garages/moulds for rooms/

special purpose elements | Shuttering for skeleton building systems | Moulds for columns/moulds for girders/

moulds for TT-elements | Insulation-Process-Application-Robot (IPAR)

| Shuttle-Processing-Plant (SPP)

Production Engineering and Automation Systems

for the Prefabricated Concrete Element Industry


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Four huge precast factories in China equipped with Italian