Small Custom Stainless Shop Lands Large Sculpture Project

Brett Kostka (left), senior designer, and David Alle, president, of Reggin Industries pause in the Calgary, Alberta, custom stainless steel shop.

Reggin Industries Inc. in Calgary, Alberta, draws from eight decades of varied experience. What opened as a family-run roofing company in 1931 expanded into a custom metal fabrication shop. It established a stainless steel division that became a leading commercial food equipment manufacturer. That was sold in 1990.

“We have evolved again. Today our work is 95 percent commercial construction. We do zero food equipment fabrication,” said David Alle, president. “Our focus is custom stainless steel architectural features along with infrastructure work. We’ve recently been involved in an expansion at the Calgary Airport, light rail transit stations, schools, and hospitals.”

Building mezzanines or structural staircases comes under the responsibility of the company’s rapidly growing light structural steel department. The company grew 25 percent two years ago and another 30 percent last year. For 2016 the plan is to invest in training and perhaps the infrastructure of the company’s 22,000-sq.-ft. shop.

Alle described his 56-person company as people-focused, “It’s the experience that counts. When we hire for our team, we look at how to take the person from their background, a mass production shop, for example, to building intricate, one-of-a-kind projects like custom doors or art pieces. Our projects have to be accurate and beautiful. Our welders and sheet metal journeymen need to be quick and nimble and really understand manufacturing, because each project is one-of-a-kind and requires decisions that balance time and cost savings based on the quantity being produced.”

Four designers keep on top of 3-D modeling skills to provide visuals of complex projects that help predict fabrication problems before they happen and assist in designing for manufacturability.

Brett Kostka, senior designer, said, “Time is the biggest enemy when it comes to cost. So we focus on finding innovative design approaches to make fabrication easier. We try to marry old-school craftsmanship with what can be done on the computer.”

Aluminum, copper, and other materials are no problem, but the company is best known for its competency in custom stainless work. That’s what drew the “Sei” sculpture project to their door.

How to Build a Whale of a Sculpture

McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Mall is a place to shop and an alternative to spending lengthy layovers in an airport terminal. Over 60 stores and eateries offer their wares in the open-air, village-style mall at Vancouver Airport.

“Sei,” a 7,902-lb. sculpture, dominates the village plaza and reflects the sky and shoppers’ images in highly polished, mirror-finish stainless. Steel and copper brought to life artist Michael Yahgulanaas’ design that emulates the graceful, curved lines of a baleen whale as it breaks the water’s surface. Sei is the Norwegian name for a type of baleen whale recorded to be as long as 64 ft. and as heavy as 28 tonnes.

Bringing Yahgulanaas’ vision to reality required graceful coordination among the artist; the metal cutting facility; and Reggin Industries, a mountain range away from the sculpture’s installation site.

The beauty and grace of a baleen whale were the inspiration for the “Sei” sculpture, designed by Michael Yahgulanaas and fabricated by Reggin Industries for the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Mall at the Vancouver Airport. Photo courtesy of Reggin Industries.

“Our background is in fine, detailed stainless work,” said Brett Kostka, senior designer at Reggin Industries. “We’ve done a lot with mirror-finish and marine corrosive environments, architectural installations, and projects that require strategic management. This project combined all of our experiences.”

From day one the company worked hand-in-hand with the artist. Yahgulanaas provided the conceptual details. Reggin created virtual 3-D models in SolidWorks® to explore what could be done with sheet metal while considering manufacturability, budget, and a tight production time frame.

“The mall had a fixed opening date, and we were brought on last in the game. We started discussions with the artist in early February of 2012 and delivered the project the first week in June that same year. We had to be very disciplined in our design and manufacturing approach to avoid changes and keep moving forward. The trick was to innovate the fabrication process,” Kostka said.

In most Reggin projects, the artist or designer develops high-level drawings and sends them out to tender. When the job is awarded, the fabricator typically develops shop drawings, moves into fabrication, and then installs in a very linear process. Kostka said that they broke all the rules while producing “Sei” because time didn’t allow for adjustments or rework if all didn’t fall into place. The design, drawings, and build happened concurrently.

“We needed a completely different process. By applying lean manufacturing, we built what we needed as we progressed, working with the artist and structural engineers along the way and including manufacturing in internal reviews to make sure the project would be buildable.

“Chronologically, we finished the structural design and ordered the parts at the same time that we started designing the internal rib structure. We would design and build just one step ahead of the other—sometimes within one day. This allowed us to get feedback instantly on what was being designed and make changes on-the-fly.”

The Issue of Size

The sculpture, without its base, is 158 in. high and 123 3/8 in. wide. It had to be built in one piece, fit out through shop door, and meet shipping regulations. The build plan required innovation. “Sei” was built on an angle within its shipping frame.

“We designed a shipping frame to build the sculpture in so once it was finished, we could load it onto the truck,” explained Kostka. “Since the sculpture was so tall, we had to build it at an angle—about 10 degrees off its true standing height. It started out upright in the 3-D model and I virtually changed its world by putting the floor at an angle.

“We used the shipping frame to create datum planes. We used the floor and the side walls of the frame to measure dimensions and find X, Y, or Z coordinates that related to the 3-D model. Using the frame was a huge advantage.”

Tolerances were constantly checked to be sure they were within +/- 0.010 in. Dave Alle, Reggin president, said, “We were constantly checking to make sure the sculpture was on track to the design. If we saw that something didn’t fit, we could look at the model and troubleshoot instantly.”

A plane passes over the Sei sculpture located in the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Mall at the Vancouver Airport. Photo courtesy of Reggin Industries.

“Sei”’s interior, fitting for its final location, resembles the internal support structure of an aircraft wing to combine strength with light weight. Construction started with 12-in. Schedule 40 304 SS structural pipes welded to the base plate.

Kostka said, “It was tricky mounting the pipes onto the angled base plate. If we had been 1 degree off, after 15 ft. we would have been a foot in the wrong direction.

“The curvature of the sculpture was derived from spline shapes that required close attention. They were constantly changing in radius so we used a CNC bending process for the structural pipes. In CAD we developed CNC cutting specifications for the 304 SS structural ribs that attached perpendicularly to the pipes. Perpendicular to these ¼-in. plates were 12-ga. 304 SS ribs that created the curvature for the 12-ga. 316 SS external skins to fit to.”

Templates ensured that the skin components, cut from brushed and mirror-finish stainless, fit properly. “Templates helped us check that the curvature was correct when hand-rolling parts. If there was a problem, we could correct the pattern in the shop and feed the information back to the design. The templates allowed us to tweak some shapes or move a hole ever so slightly to make sure it would fit perfectly.”

Clean and Precise Parts

Reggin relied on Empire Cutting Corp., also in Calgary, for the precise laser cutting of the majority of components. Some internal parts were cut by waterjet. Vincent Larsen, Empire’s president, said, “My part of the project was ensuring that we cut the right lines--for probably over 100 components--from the 5-ft. by 10-ft. sheets. Precise, clean cuts were critical because just about everything on these sheets was exposed, and some sheets were butted together rather than welded, which requires precision.”

Fitting with Reggin’s concurrent design and build process, Larsen received drawings as they became available and, at times, had Reggin trucks waiting as parts were completed on the Kern 400-W laser system. “They were designing, drawing, and putting it together as fast as I could cut,” he said.

A preburn removed the protective vinyl from the mirrored sheets before cutting to eliminate interference with the automatic material and cutting head gap adjustment. Larsen said that they pushed the system to its upper speed limits, and accuracy was “dead on.”

“The biggest challenge was verifying the drawings. With circles or squares I can tell if drawings are accurate, but with the whale, nothing was standard. We needed a way to confirm if a curve or arc was correct when we received the drawings. Every drawing was sent in two formats, opened in two systems, and overlaid as a safety check. After that we were very methodical. As long as we were diligent and checked every step we knew nothing had been missed before we started to cut. Under the pressure of the time line for this project and the cost of the material we were cutting, we couldn’t afford to take shortcuts,” said Larsen.

“When I knew they were close to completing a drawing, I would put a small job on the laser so we could interrupt quickly and work around it,” he said. “Once the commitment was made, there was no flex in the deadlines.”

Smooth Lines, Shiny Surfaces

The reflective finish was a key element to Yahgulanaas’ design, but, budget precluded across-the-board welding and polishing to eliminate seams, which Kostka said would have come at an “astronomical” cost. So reveal lines were introduced, with the artist approving placement.

After two years of double-digit growth, Reggin has plans to invest in the infrastructure of its 22,000-sq.-ft. shop.

Alignment pins, tabs, offset clips, and even glue helped secure the skins to keep welding, which lead to more polishing, to a minimum. “We used prefinished mirrored sheets and polished the weld lines. The whale nose has a nice roll to it, so everything leading up to it had to have as little welding as possible,” said Kostka. “Still, the welding and polishing was labor-intensive. At one point we had about 10 people crawling over the sculpture to complete the polishing.”

Another key design element was copper gilding on “SEI”’s lower surface. Working upside down because of the sculpture’s position in the frame and mainly at night when other fabrication was not in process, Vancouver-based gilders, Holly Graff and David Graff, applied more than 1,500 sheets of copper leaf to “Sei”’s underbelly.

Travel and Installation

The dimensions and weight of “Sei” required it to travel from Calgary to Vancouver in a round-about route—via north Edmonton and Jasper as the load was too high for the snow tunnels in the pass. Traffic lights needed to be removed from some intersections to allow its passage. A direct route would have taken a day and a half. “Sei”’s road trip lasted a week.

As the sculpture traveled toward its home, the area around its base in the McArthurGlen plaza was already surrounded by finished tile that would have cracked under the weight of the sculpture and crane. Adding another installation complication, the plaza itself was surrounded by restaurants and stores. And, airport restrictions limited the height of the crane that could be used. Still, “Sei” had to be lifted over buildings and positioned on its base from off the job site.

“On top of that, the crane had to follow a path that was right in the flight path,” said Alle. “We had to get a special permit, good between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., to do the lift. It was a very tight schedule to get this sculpture lifted and secured in its final resting point.”

The result of all the planning, long hours, and creativity was a beautiful, unique piece of public art that draws the attention of shoppers and passengers flying in and out of the airport. Kostka said, “This project was rewarding from the team-building point of view, and some fabricators said it was the ‘coolest’ project they had worked on. It became pretty emotional for a lot of people when it left the shop.”

Photos of “Sei” construction courtesy of Reggin Industries. All other photos by Neil Koven Photography.

Slide Show | 18 Images