And then I thought about corrugated panels. They make corrugated fiberglass panels for roofs for greenhouses and patios. They make corrugated cardboard for boxes. But these only have corrugations running in one direction. They make the panels rigid in the direction of the ridges, but the no so much cross wise.
Corrugated Fiberglass Sheets |
Okay, here's the big idea. Take one corrugated panel. Make the corrugations gentle so the distance from the crest of one curve to the next is about six inches instead of the two inches you find on fiberglass panels. Now take a second panel and cut it up into little pieces that will sit in the valleys of the first panel. Imagine the two panels lying on the floor, one at right angles to the other. Further, imagine one as the cutter, and the other as the cuttee. The corrugated end of the cutter slides into the cuttee and cuts it into hundreds of identical little pieces. While being cut, the cuttee does not move. Now we have a waffle pattern top and bottom. Weld all the edges of the cut pieces to the cutter piece. Now you have a very rigid panel about an inch thick made of two thin sheets of metal, and no weak points.
Of course cutting, placing, and welding are all going to be a bit tricky, but with laser cutters and robotics, I think you could do it. Problem is, would there be enough demand for such a panel to justify the expense of the fancy equipment? Or could you farm it out to slave labor in China or India? That might be something they could do, metal being more of a precious commodity over there than here.
A word about Bimbo: They had a big bakery around the corner from where I used to work in Beaverton. I mean a BIG bakery. There were always semi-trucks coming and going. About once a week I would see a flour truck show up. It looked like a giant tanker trailer, with triple axles on the rear end. Bimbo must be the biggest company you never heard of. Oroweat is one of their smaller divisions. Funny, I never noticed that Oroweat was missing an 'H'.
View Bimbo Bakery Beaverton Oregon in a larger map |
Update October 2020 replaced map that I inadvertently deleted. Now I add the blog post URL to the map's description.
We see occasional Bimbo-branded products here, but in the States, they seem to concentrate on the American brands they've bought. (The company is based in Mexico City.)
ReplyDeleteThe (pre-)WW2 transport aircraft Junkers JU52 was made of corrugated Aluminium, as was the Ford Trimotor.
ReplyDeleteI have(had) type ratings on both and got to fly the Trimotor at Oshkosh in 1984.