STATE-OF-THE-ART Manufacturing

At Secure Site Design, we are committed to using the best available state-of-the-art technology and to developing all necessary highly sophisticated manufacturing techniques. By integrating flexible design with flexible manufacturing processes, we are able to produce security bollards which can mate with matching site amenities in a broad variety of applications. The flexibility of the design choices and the integration of multiple amenities provide extraordinary opportunities for landscape architects, architects, engineers, planners, and security experts.

The Street Sentry Series is a complex set of precision formed steel arches joined vertically and horizontally and reinforced with internal steel sleeves. Literally dozens of steel pieces must be welded with tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch. The steel components are selected and sized to provide the necessary strength when used in conjunction with each other, while avoiding the distortions created by bending, welding, and forming. The internal sleeves must be inserted with little clearance after fabrication and galvanizing, requiring that production techniques do little to alter the dimensional stability of the component parts.

The welding is accomplished with sufficient uniformity, predictable repeatability, and reliable production quality by incorporating the most technically proficient robotics available. The unique Street Sentry configuration requires predictable bollard rotation while the robot weld torch is moving. It must be absolutely still when lateral joints are welded and able to rotate at variable speed when curved welds are applied ... all while handling a very heavy load. An enormous addressable servo motor, which becomes the 7th axis of the robot, is essential. The servo manipulates the bollard assembly along with the permanent fixture which holds the bollard components in place. Fixtures must be heavy enough to resist wear and distortion, strong enough to prevent the component parts from moving or distorting, flexible enough to allow for the loading and unloading of component parts and/or finished bollards, and reliable enough to move on command. The building of the fixtures has been a daunting task in precision design.

The galvanizing of the finished bollards requires that the solutions used in cleaning and etching allow for complete coverage including the inside and outside of the tubular sections. Galvanizing must be done by a qualified galvanizer skilled in the application of hot-dip galvanizing to complex structures. Finish coating can be applied on-site, after installation, using appropriate primers. The bollards can also be powder-coated after galvanizing. In both cases, coating over galvanizing will yield a surface which is not as smooth as coating without galvanizing. However, the need to completely protect the complex structure argues for hot-dip galvanizing as the preferred initial coating.