EoW November 2008

Feature Fencing, mesh-making & netting T hese specialities lead double lives: public and private. Stainless steel hex mesh is beautiful as well as utilitarian in a fireplace guard. In a plainer setting, it holds in place the mineral wool blankets encasing vessels and pipes in refineries, power plants, and refrigerated warehouses. An ornamental fence of wrought iron and galvanised welded wire encloses a classic garden. A fixed-knot fence manufactured from 12-½ gauge, high-tensile, Class 3 galvanised wire is admired, if it is, by grazing livestock. NASA-certified, 99% pure copper netting shields the windows of spacecraft. Steel netting supplies the reinforced inlay in a common concrete pavement. What these versatile products provide, in all their manifestations, is quality. They must. Metal is most vulnerable where it is bent, and a panel of fence, mesh, or netting incorporates many dozens or even hundreds of bends. Every one of these is a point of potential failure. Any breach is an opening to possible danger, great or small. In this context – whether the application is netting to cover greenhouse seedbeds or fencing for zoo enclosures – the term ‘weakest link’ takes on special meaning. Fortunately for buyers and users of these superb products, it is a meaning very well understood by the companies profiled in these pages of EuroWire. EuroWire – November 2008 63

Photo courtesy of Ravni Technologies