NORDIMPIANTI’s casting machines can produce a large range of prestressed concrete products such as hollow core slabs for flooring and walls, inverted T and I-beams, vineyard posts and lintels, prestressed slabs, U slabs, inverted double T slabs etc.
Prestressed products made by NORDIMPIANTI’s Extruder, Slipformer and Wet Casting machines offer many advantages that make them a success all over the world.
- The possibility to use them in many areas of construction such as residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure and agricultural sectors;
- Large production volumes with uniform cross sections even with different reinforcement cable configurations;
- The ability to use prestressing cables in single wire, strands or 2/3 wires in high tensile steel;
- Assured quality by using equipment specifically designed to produce high quality concrete elements;
- Low unit labour costs due to the efficient use of engineering design to automate as much of the machine as possible;
- There is no need to use expensive formworks;
- Production flexibility. The ability to change the height of the concrete elements within certain limits by changing only some parts on the forming insert;
- Excellent surface finish;
- Product quality assured by consistent homogeneous concrete;
- The produced elements have high load resistances thanks to a low water/cement ratio of concrete from 0.32 to 0.38. Higher water/cement ratios cannot be employed for the production of desired cross sections without the use of expensive formworks;
- Elements produced by NORDIMPIANT’s casting machines have a high resistance to carbonation due to the low cement/water ratio and the high compaction level giving the finished slab high impermeability combined with high mechanical resistance.
Despite the low water/cement ratios making the concrete very hard to work NORDIMPIANTI’s machines have no difficulty in consistently forming complex element profiles, ready to be lifted from the production bed within 6-8 hours after casting.
The extruder and slipformer machines enable the user to cast elements with or without prestressing cables but obviously with prestressing comes the cost and ease of use advantages demanded by the civil and industrial construction sector.
Prestressing gives high quality elements with smaller cross sections with a more efficient use of materials. Smaller cross sections mean lighter panels reducing the cost of transport and allowing easy handling both on-site and in the production plant.