The group went to an aluminium/metalwork cladding company called ‘Ash and Lacys’. Firstly we were taken to a meeting room where ‘A&L’ showed a presentation about the work they do. The group was then taken on a tour of the site where we learnt briefly how the company works to get from the deign process to the finishing process.
The next session had us dividing into 3 smaller groups so that we can all study/look at an area of the making process, the design process, the CNC machine process and the finishing process
Going back to Ash and Lacys we studied one of the 3 processes which mine happened to be the CNC making process. Firstly the drawings and CAD files come from the design team who then sends it to the CNC team who inputs the data into the machine. The machine takes a few minutes to cut a piece which then gets taken to the finishing team to fold and finished off. Sometimes not all of the metal sheet is used and are thrown away which makes us wonder if there were any way we can reduce waste material. We took a video of the process to use later in a presentation of our own
The next time we met, each of the small groups had to present what we had found out. When the CNC presentation was finished, one of the people who worked there questioned us if there was a way we could make the CNC process more efficient. After all of the presentations we were all asked questions which made us think about the processes and to take them into consideration when we become architects, as some people don’t know how difficult it could be to do them
We then came back and again split up into groups to design a cladding system for the “walkie talkie” building in London to prevent the area around it heating up, taking into account of what we have learnt at Ash and Lacys
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