Slaw Precast (Lehighton, PA) is a family owned business, founded in 1979. They are certified by PCI in 3 distinct categories: Architectural, Bridge and Commercial Structures. They were recently contracted to create energy efficient precast insulated wall panels for a new, state-of-the-art school building in New York City.
The Challenge: The project called for more than 230 panels to be cast, weighing up to 41,000 lbs. each. The panels featured different surface designs that required formliners. Construction delays due to COVID-19 meant the panels had to be cast quickly to meet a tight deadline.
Taking Control of Formliner Production: Slaw Precast calculated that buying expensive, premade formliners would add months of lead time, and was not an option. The only way to meet the deadline was to make their own. By doing so, they could also design the custom liner system to be modular for added production flexibility. This allowed Slaw to reduce the total number of panels from 320 to 234. Making their own liners saved Slaw Precast time, labor and money.
Choosing the Right Mold Rubber: VytaFlex™ 60 was selected to make the rubber formliners because of its lasting durability in production and ability to render color accurate castings. The EZ-Mix™ Meter Mix Machine was used to help Slaw quickly and efficiently mix and dispense thousands of pounds of VytaFlex™ to produce the formliners.