Award-Winning Artwork for PINP Backdrop

By / Don Procter Photos courtesy of Partners in Progress

It is rare that a sheet metal fabrication shop’s work is on display for its peers from across the country.

But that day came for MetalFab Inc., a mid-sized custom shop in Florida that fabricated a 40-foot-long stainless steel backdrop to the stage of the 2018 Partners in Progress Conference.

“The International wanted to showcase metal—stainless steel to be exact,” says Duncan McDonald, owner of MetalFab Inc., who was approached by Pat O’Leary, business manager of Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 15 in Tampa, to do the job.

Seeing it as a good cause and an opportunity for nation-wide exposure, McDonald agreed to donate materials and labor to complete the task.

Using about 720 square feet of 16-gauge stainless steel panels, the contractor fabricated the large backdrop in sections, each separated by four square columns clad in the steel. Stainless steel sheets of 4 x 12 and 5 x 12 feet were sheared to size and notched to fit together with a traumatic rotating head punch. The design was then laid out and formed with MetalFab’s 250-ton Accurpress hydraulic press break.

The panels featured a satin brush finish to eliminate glare from conference lighting. Fabrication was done at MetalFab’s 15,000-square-foot shop in San Antonio, Florida, north of Tampa. It took just over a month to complete.

The contractor collaborated on the project with Production Acuity, retained by Partners in Progress, to complete “a practical design” based on the size of available materials for the “huge assembly,” says McDonald, noting the production company was responsible for construction of the wood frame substructure.

Initially, MetalFab and Production Acuity disagreed on some design details—the seams for the flat panels being a case in point. “They wanted fewer seams but we required more because of the limited size of materials at our disposal,” says McDonald.

“We told them that what looks good on paper can’t always be fabricated in metal.”

The fabricator says all of the backdrop’s panels were “precisely formed dimensionally and correctly notched because we used hairline seams.”

That might seem like a tricky task but “it is something we do every day,” says McDonald. “This is our craft: shearing, punching, and forming materials.”

An adhesive secured the stainless steel backdrop to the wood structure (which included inset spaces for presentation monitors). “They didn’t want people to see any fasteners,” McDonald says.

The finished product turned heads in the sheet metal world. “It was a really beautiful project and it came out super,” he adds.

Local 15’s O’Leary says he was confident from day one that the contractor would meet the challenges of the unusual job. “To me the biggest difference [in this project] and what they normally do was how large it was,” he says. “The good thing about the backdrop is that it was at a conference where they [MetalFab] had all their peers there [from sheet metal workers locals across the U.S.] to see what they could do.”

O’Leary adds that a number of conference delegates he met commented on the attractive backdrop. “All the seams had to match up for the full length and they did,” he says.

“If an out-of-state contractor is looking at a job down here or maybe even back in their Local, they now know we have a contractor in our Local that can do that work and do it precisely to the specs that it is designed to.”

The Local’s business manager says initially the International union came to him to see if Local 15 apprentices could fabricate the backdrop, but the union’s facilities are not equipped to build a wall that large. “That’s why I reached out to MetalFab,” says O’Leary.

Both the Local and MetalFab received an award for the backdrop, says McDonald, noting that motivational speaker John Foley, a retired Blue Angels pilot, presented them with replicas of Blue Angels Helmuts at the show. “It was quite an honor to be recognized in front of all the Locals in the country... to get the approval of our union brothers,” he says.

The majority of MetalFab’s work is in the Tampa Bay area but the fabricator has done projects throughout Florida. “It seems like architects today are into designs where nothing is straight. Everything is either radiused or angled... inside and out,” says McDonald.

O’Leary is looking into adapting Local 15’s training program to meet the growing market of architectural metal work. “We want to train our guys to know how to apply the newest wall panel systems, for instance.” •