As a chief supplier to contractors all over the Midwest, St. Louis Prestress (Glen Carbon, IL), owned and operated by brothers Jim and Dale Keller, manufactures a wide variety of custom-made precast, prestressed concrete products, including double tees; hollowcore floors and roofs; structural beams, columns and spandrels; structural wall panels and insulated wall panels; and structural bridge beams.
These components are made at the company?s plant ? which is certified by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute ? and then shipped to job sites all over the Midwest, where they?re used to construct state bridges, parking garages, stadiums, industrial warehouses and much more.
St. Louis Prestress has provided building components to many well-known entities, including Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (beams for the Lindbergh Tunnel), Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (dormitory flooring), The Edward Jones® Dome (ramping system) and numerous state bridges throughout Missouri and Illinois.
St. Louis Prestress ?prestresses? (hence the name) about 90 percent of its products using a cable system to ensure each component is pulled to a required tension that?s determined by the company?s engineers. Each product may have as many as 32 of these cables within it, which are pulled to about 32,000 lbs and stretched tight using a steel pull block at each end with holes to secure the cables. Concrete then is poured around it, according to Eric Hornberger, plant manager.
?After the concrete has cured, we cut the cables, creating a camber in our concrete product,? he says. ?The steel pull blocks are critical to accomplishing this step, and the holes in these are created with a magnetic core drill. This makes the mag drill an essential piece of equipment for us.?
When you manufacture precast building components composed of concrete and steel, you require power tools that are as heavy duty as the products they create. The magnetic core drill Hornberger?s team was using kept breaking down, so he decided to search for another option.
?Our company mission is to build a quality product on time, every time. To do that, we have to have tools that are as durable as they are easy to use. Unfortunately, our old mag drill was neither. It was breaking down a lot. I took it to the shop in St. Louis to be repaired six times in the space of a year. We can?t afford down time like that,? he says. ?We can?t hand drill through heavy steel plate, so we need our mag drills to be up and running all of the time, or our work comes to a standstill, which isn?t acceptable.?
Lack of durability wasn?t the only challenge presented by the old machine. ?That drill was heavy. It was all I could do to get it loaded into the back of my truck,? he remembers. ?We also had some safety issues with it ? the magnet had failed a couple of times and actually fell off when we were drilling on a side application. No one got hurt, but we were lucky. Overall, the drill just wasn?t working for us, so I decided to try to find a better one.?
Hornberger evaluated a few different magnetic core drills that were comparable to the one he was currently using, but would hopefully solve some of the issues he was facing. The KBM 32U from Fein Power Tools, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA) piqued his interest for a number of reasons.
?The KBM drill is quite a bit lighter than the other machine was. It?s durable, but it?s also portable ? it?s not a problem for me to pick it up and move it around, which is a significant benefit for everyone who has to use it,? he said. ?Even though it?s lightweight, it?s extremely rugged. It goes through a plate of steel like it?s nothing, requiring very little effort from the operator to get that done.?
Versatility also is a key advantage for this machine, according to Hornberger. ?Having all of the different chucks that come with it allows me to go a lot of different ways when I?m using it. Also, it has the attachment change system already hooked up, so the guys can?t mess it up when changing the bits,? he said. ?With this mag drill, you can actually put the magnetic base on something higher and drill a hole a lot lower than the other machine we used. The travel in the drill is much greater, which is a distinct advantage for this tool.?
With four models to choose from ? the KBM 32 Q, KBM 52 U, KBM 50 QX and KBM 80 U ? the KBM line can satisfy the requirements of virtually any core drilling application, according to Vince Grlovich, vice president of sales and marketing for Fein. ?These tools feature carbide drill bits that last longer and perform up to 30 percent faster than traditional bits, but can still accept Weldon shanked high speed steel bits. What?s more, their high power motors with sustained performance and an optimum power-to-weight ratio deliver unrivaled efficiency and drilling power.?
The new QuickIN change system makes changing tools on all core drilling systems easy, since they are equipped with a robust, accurate, dual dovetail guide. An electronic cutout mechanism is automatically triggered when the drilling pressure is too high, enhancing safety and protecting the motor and tool. Magnetic feet are sized so the machines use less space. Up to 2,420 lbs of holding force makes overhead core drilling safe.
?Core drilling produces large holes quickly with high precision, even through thick materials. With no pre-drilling or re-tooling required, core drilling can finish the job in half the time of twist drilling,? notes Grlovich.
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Fein Power Tools Inc., 1030 Alcon Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15220, 412-922-8886, Fax: 412-922-8767, www.feinus.com.
