Patented sheet material offers advantages in machining
In addition to up-to-date machinery and trained personnel, the choice of quality sheet metal is crucial for the production of high-quality mechanical engineering and metal structures. For this, it is best to call on a partner with expertise. At Van Heyghen Staal, with headquarters in Evergem (Ghent) and an additional production facility in Poland, they breathe sheet metal. In order to meet market demands, the manufacturer developed the LaserpressPlus® sheets.
Van Heyghen Staal specializes in the development and production of steel plates. The headquarters and main production facility of this European market leader is located in Evergem, near the port of Ghent and with gateway to the North Sea via the Ghent-Terneuzen canal. The raw material for the sheet material is large steel coils weighing up to 32 tons. These are supplied via the ports of Ghent and Antwerp.
Van Heyghen Staal was founded in 1981 by Henri Van Heyghen, who was bitten by the microbe of steel at an early age. He discovered a lot at his late grandfather's scrap yard. He also quickly saw the numerous opportunities downstream in the supply chain. So he started processing steel in coils. In the meantime, this family business has built a strong reputation within the European sheet steel industry. The beating heart of its European operations is in Evergem, where a production hall houses several cut-to-length lines. With sister company Europickling, an in-house pickling line was also started up on the same site. In the Polish town of Stargard, close to the port of Szczecin, the specialist opened Van Heyghen Stal Polska in 2015, a state-of-the-art production site to supply the Central European market.
The result is a strengthened position in the European market. Van Heyghen Steel focuses on niche markets and strives to create synergies and value between its various activities and its customers. It was the first player in Northern Europe with a pickling plant for processing a wide range of coil products, which was not linked to a steel mill. The launch of the European patent was also a hit.
Van Heyghen Staal produces steel plates characterized by very strict flatness tolerances, better thickness control and optimal surface finish for numerous applications in the manufacturing industry. This allows them to guarantee a constant and measured extension of thickness over the entire sheet. Thanks to this unique, advanced method of production, the material reaches unprecedented levels of quality. This result is due to the line's unique cold-roll rig for decoiling and flattening coils into sheets. Indeed, this removes all internal stresses to the core of the sheet, optimizes the flatness and surface aspect, and also significantly reduces thickness variations. This range of high-quality products is sold under the brand name LaserpressPlus®. Thanks to its fine-grained structure, high elasticity and a guaranteed flatness tolerance of up to 3 mm/m to LaserpressPlus® 460 and ½ EN on higher tensile steel, this material meets the most stringent quality requirements. These sheets increase productivity up to 30%. They exist in different grades of hot rolled steel and can be obtained either pickled or unstained, with natural rolling edges or steamed.
Advantages thanks to LaserpressPlus®
Plasma and laser cutting
1. Faster cutting: productivity up to 30% higher thanks to lower silicon content and a flawless surface
2. Perfect flatness
3. Minimal burr formation on the cutting edges.
Automated bending, stamping and punching
1. Excellent cold transformation thanks to higher elasticity
2. Flatness tolerance = maximum 3 mm/m up to LaserpressPlus® 460
3. Refined metallurgy with strict tolerances: precise bending and perfect repetition piece by piece