Architecture company Rau created Brummen Town Hall in the Netherlands to last just 20 years. Due to changing municipality borders, the firm opted for reusable materials that will be dismantled and taken back to manufacturers at the end of the building’s working life.
 
90 per cent of the materials used to build Brummen Town Hall are recyclable. At the end of the building’s life, little material will go into landfill — instead it will be re-purposed for other plans. Manufacturers too are deciding on how materials can be reused, one increasingly popular option is re-manufacturing. This is the process of dismantling, cleansing and repairing components so that the product can be reassembled for sale at the performance and quality of a new product.
 
The technique is mostly used in the aerospace and automotive sectors. Despite having a history of several decades, there remains some distress about the differences between reconditioned and re-manufactured products. Re-manufacturing is a more thorough process, which returns the engine to its original document, whereas a reconditioned engine may still have some broken components.
 
During the re-manufacturing process a product will be collected, inspected, disassembled and then reconditioned and replacement parts added as necessary. The item will then be reassembled, before going through quality assurance and evaluating to verify the product is to specification and of a high quality.
 
The process has been made better by technologies such as laser metal deposition, which can be used to melt metal powder or wire on a surface. High pressure cold spray technology can also be utilized to adhere tiny particles to a surface without heat. Developments in scanning technology mean it is easier to compare the re-manufactured part to a gold-standard original and to devise a tool path to correct any differences between the two.


This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com