(upbeat music) - Hi, and welcome to Lexicon.

My name's Caitlin and I'm going to be your tour guide for today.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we take beams like this, send them through our shop and whenever they come out they turn into things like bridges and stadiums and things even like airports.

So, come on, let's get going.

(upbeat music) So one of the coolest things that we do here at Lexicon is that we're able to send steel from our shops out into America.

We do that by using robots.

I brought my friend Justin here and he's going to explain a little bit more about that for you.

- This is our robot at Lexicon.

We feed beams down the rollers to the robot.

They slide out on the grippers, we got a scanner table.

The arm will grab 'em off the scanner table and put 'em onto the beam and then the welder will drop down and tack it, and from there it'll weld it and from there on to production.

(upbeat music) - So one of the ways that we get the big metal beams out the door is by taking them and making sure that there are no sharp edges, right?

Safety first.

So one of the ways that we do that is by using tools like a grinder.

A grinder is basically a wheel that's shaving off metal.

It gets really, really hot and it flies off.

And what does that make?

Sparks!

(upbeat music) Steel beams are really heavy.

Even I can't move them.

Some of our beams weigh from 6,000 pounds up to 220,000 pounds.

That's really heavy!

(upbeat music) So the way that we're able to move these big steel beams throughout the shop is by using things like cranes.

A crane can hold up to 40 tons.

Do you know how much 40 ton equals?

80,000 pounds.

That's like a loaded 18 wheeler driving down the highway that you see every day.

(upbeat music) So before our beams go out into America we have to make sure that they're painted.

What does the paint help do?

And helps keep them protected from weather and other things like staying really strong so that they're able to last for a very long time.

(upbeat music) So one of our biggest jobs here at Lexicon is welding but do you know what welding really is?

Welding is whenever you take two pieces of metal and join them together.

But how do you do that?

You get a wire and you get it really hot and you put it between the two pieces of metal and they join.

But what's the importance of that?

Well, it keeps it really strong.

What do really big pieces of strong metal build?

Things like bridges, stadiums and even airports.

(upbeat music) The big question is how do we get the steel into our building and out of our building?

By using things like a forklift.

A forklift can lift up to 18 tons, but how much is that?

36,000 pounds.

That's a lot of steel!

(upbeat music) Thanks for stopping by today.

I hope that you learned something.

If you want to come by and see us sometime we'd love to have you.

Bye.