Justin Stanford has been in the glass industry for a little while and it seems like it's always doors and door hardware that's holding up a project. So they were looking for a way to bring that into the modern era.

Doing everything by hand just wasn't cost effective and it wasn't time effective. 51 Fab started looking around different options and actually reached out to Glaziers Center for recommendations.

Glaziers Centers had just launched the all-new Rhino DoorFab . They were already using Glazier Studio (design and estimating software) and using the Rhino 900 so it was an ideal fit. After a quick demo, they were sold.

Now 51 Fab is a pioneering supplier of storefront door, frame, and related hardware.

Last summer, 51 Fab had three schools projects that included 300 doors and 100+ door frames. “We were able to knock them out in a month as opposed to three months that it would normally take by doing it by hand.”

“We run frames through this all the time. We've had schools where there's a bunch of doors by others and I'll run butts and strikes and run it for weeks straight. Just cutting those out.”

How many doors were you able to produce on average manually?

Justin stated, “Something basic with just rim panics or something like that, maybe 10 to 15 doors a week. And with this (Rhino DoorFab), we're doing 25 in a day at least.”

Now Justin and his team layout on one door, and if it shows up on multiple doors throughout the project or even future projects, the programming is already there.

Laying out the door fabrication details and programming the Rhino DoorFab is substantially faster than having to lay it on every single door and then do the cutouts by hand. “I lay it out one time, program it, and then we're running doors right after that and it's doing it in a fraction of what a human could do.”

As Justin proclaimed, “We started really getting comfortable with it and it just completely changed the way we did doors. So far, it's exceeded our expectations. I know a bunch of the hardware that we're running into now, especially with the doors changing as far as thermal doors, there was no way we'd be able to do these by hand anymore.”

51 Fab’s use of the fully automated Rhino DoorFab system allows them to handle the smallest frame prep to the more complex door and hardware fabrication. Not only does the full automation significantly cut down on turnaround times and improve finished part quality, but the lower overhead provides a discernable cost savings to clients.