Attleborough Factory

1.          Introduction

In July 2010, Multi Fab Ltd started operations at it’s brand new, purpose built factory, based at Attleborough.

This new production facility perfectly complements the company’s existing production base, at Mildenhall.   The operations of the company had outgrown the Mildenhall premises, with this new site enabling a logical split of operations between the two facilities:

Mildenhall 

• Doors & windows assembly
• Barwork fabrication & assembly
• Unitised façade production
• Bespoke assembly work

Attleborough 

• Sheet metal production
• Welding
• Polyester powder coating

 2.         Details of the Attleborough Site

• Address: Bunn’s Bank Road, Attleborough, NR7 1QD
• Built on a 2.5 acre site, this features 22,000 square feet of factory space, 4,000 square feet of serviced offices, and extensive car parking.

• 98 aqua cells are buried under the car park, providing storm water storage, before controlled release into an attenuation lagoon.
• Acoustic cladding to the factory meets the stringent noise control requirements that formed part of the Planning Permission.

• State of the art office area features “parallel opening windows”, supplied by Schueco UK Ltd.

3.         Production Facilities

Sheet metal works

An extensive programme of investment has been carried out in 2010, to enhance our range of sheet metal equipment.   Together with a programme of skilled staff recruitment, this has expanded our production capacity, enabling rapid turnaround of customers’ requirements.

Production facilities include:

2 No 4 metre guillotines
2.5 metre guillotine

2 No Shape Delta CNC punches
Shape Beta CNC punch

2 No 4 metre brake presses
2.5 metre brake press

Euromac notcher

TIG welding equipment
MIG welding equipment

Polyester powder coating facilities

Investment in a brand new powder coating plant enables Multi Fab to offer a powder coating service to a wide range of industries.   This investment includes:

• Nordson “Encore” powder spray system
• “Vixen” Pre treatment plant
• Spray booth 4.4m x 3.5m x 2.9m high
• Airflow  225 degree centigrade powder curing shuttle oven
• Overhead track system – 40 heavy duty rollers each with 50kg capacity 

Central to this investment is the pre treatment plant, manufactured by Vixen Surface Treatments Ltd.   This cleans and etches the metal surface to be coated, producing a uniform surface.   This, in turn, improves the bonding of the powder coat, minimises any oxidation and improves corrosion resistance.

The Vixen plant has been built specifically for our requirements.   This is essentially a front-loading, stainless steel, cleaning machine, in which components to be cleaned are hung and subjected to a chemical cleaning process.   In order to meet the stringent standards required for powder coating of building industry components, the plant has been developed to be run with a 9-stage cycle of chemical washes and rinses.   This is the most involved cleaning cycle ever devised by Vixen for one of their machines, making it unique in the world.

Advantages of the Vixen pre treatment process over conventional methods: 

• Suitable for the construction industry - Operates to BS6496 and EN12206, the required standards for external architectural purposes.   This enables the company to offer 25 year guarantees to customers.    Multi Fab are one of only 12 suppliers in the UK who can coat to this standard, and are the only ones who do so using a Vixen machine. 
• Future proofed – future legislation may dictate that all pre treatment processes are “chromate free”.    The Vixen plant is suitable for both chromate, and chromate-free chemicals. 
• Health & safety – as a completely enclosed process, this ensures that operatives are not exposed to potentially harmful chemicals. 
• Conventional multiple tank processes not required – these conventional systems require a large amount of space, as well as providing a health & safety hazard to operatives. 
• Large capacity – 4.2 metre x 2.0 metre x 2.0 metre enables a large range of component sizes to be pre-treated.   Conventional tank systems are normally geared towards a narrow range of component sizes, and are therefore limited in their applications.