JUNE-JULY 2018 Nov-Dec 2017 - Copy | Page 30

ARTICLE
ensures that those on the construction
site, as well as a project’s eventual
tenants are less likely to be exposed
to weather-related health risks. Also,
an indoor construction environment
presents considerably fewer risks for
accidents and other liabilities. There are
strict factory processes and procedures
that protect the worker from on-the-job
injury. At a construction site, although
THE MODERN MODULAR
safety is of utmost importance, workers
are subjected to weather-related
conditions, changing ground conditions,
wind and other crew members who are
at the site.
a framing hammer.
Every component has been figured out; where in North
America windows are essentially stapled into place from
the exterior, these windows are installed with adjustable
fasteners so that the window can be levelled perfectly and
at the end of its useful life can be removed and replaced –
from the inside. It’s designed for deconstruction. Similarly,
© Randek
Lindbäcks , a 90 year old company in northern Sweden, is
truly taking modular construction to new heights, cranking
out apartments, condos, student housing and seniors
buildings a rate of twenty units per week. The modules are
4150 wide [13’-7”] and optimally 8950 [29’-4”] long. The
modules look superficially like they are coming out of North
American factories, but it is a very different product.
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The level of automation in the factory is way beyond anything
you see in North America, where framing is done in factories
much like it is done in the field. Here it is “screen to machine”
– wood is fed into giant patented machines that feed, align
and fasten the framing, to any level of complexity. There
are no drawings and no tape measures; it’s all automatic,
cranking out a wall every seventeen
minutes, including windows (in fact the
windows are laid down and the wall framed
around them) and insulation.
© Lindbäcks Group AB, Sweden
the wiring is all fished through flex conduit so it is modifiable
and upgradeable.
It is all automated and industrialized like
most modern industrial production in every
industry except housing, which is still in the
last century. Swedish toolmaker Randek has
automated the entire process; compare the
results out of this to a guy with a nailgun or
© Screw adjustment of window
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