We recently completed a massive three floor spiral glass staircase for a beautiful custom-built home in Kelowna. This staircase was fabricated on-site and consisted of a wide variety of shapes and complex sizes. Despite the vast complexity of the project, it ended up being one of our easiest install jobs to date. Granted we typically prefer to supply curved glass only, we do make some exceptions to work directly with the homeowner and contractors when specifically requested. In this case, the local glass company who was awarded the job asked us to make a special trip to the site to help them as this project was outside of their area of expertise.
When it comes to measuring a curved glass staircase and making patterns, we’ve seen it all over the years- cardboard or coroplast patterns, pre-bent aluminum channels and curved wooden templates. These patterns give us good information to work with, but we still must take the patterns, digitize them, and turn them into AutoCAD drawings for the consumer/builder to sign-off on. Although we all do our best throughout this process, mistakes can happen and even if our glass comes in within a few millimeters of the required curve, we can end up with pieces that don’t fit. This is especially true for custom staircases like this one that was manufactured onsite.
To find a better solution for a project of this scope, we contracted a company in ON, Canada called TSC Dimensional Inspection Services. The company was founded by engineers in the aerospace field who saw the need for long range scanning and reverse engineering solutions. After we hired them they spent two days onsite laser measuring every detail of the metal staircase form. Their laser plotted over 1,000,0000 points and then their engineers returned to ON and turned that data into precise AutoCAD drawings that we used for production. We still have all the files saved so that should the customer ever need a replacement piece, we can easily get it into production for them.
What impressed us the most about TSC was that they guaranteed that the production files they gave us would be correct. So within about a week of the onsite measurement we got the files and started on production. Once the glass was ready a few of our guys made the trip from Vancouver to Kelowna to start the installation of the 38 pieces of custom curved glass. To my amazement, every piece worked!
The cost for the laser measuring is a significant investment, but when you’re dealing with complex structures, large-scale projects and time-sensitive dates (especially when there’s a financial agreement to be done in time or else face penalty fees) this investment is well worth it!
