How do we work our magic?  Behind the scenes at DEM Sports…

So, just a few words about how we get from a pile of raw steel, nuts & bolts, wheels, net and all sorts of other sundries which look like a giant Meccano set (for anyone who remembers that!), to one of our unique finished cages…

We start with a thought, an idea in our creative designer’s head, which turns into a design, often just a scruffy sketch on a piece of scrap paper, with words and measurements in unintelligible script.   This gets translated into a couple of drawings – a ‘general arrangement’ drawing, which is a kind of assembly drawing; and a more detailed ‘fabrication drawing’ which includes all the component parts numbered up and is used by the guys in the workshop to cut the steel, drill the holes in the right places and weld bits of metal together, ready to go off to the galvanising plant, which turns the metal from dull steel to a nice shiny silver finish. 

It comes back from galvanising, ready to be cleaned up, and then might head off for powder-coating if the customer wants a coloured, or more aesthetically pleasing finish.   If the customer is assembling the cage, the last stage in the process is for every part to be numbered, so it can be matched to the drawing and hopefully make self-assembly straight-forward.   If DEM are installing the cage, it falls to the install team – the guys who get up often in the middle of the night to avoid the worst traffic and get to site to build the cage and get home before it gets dark.

It all sounds so simple but can be fraught with problems – holes being drilled a millimetre out, nets too small or too big and a million other things – and the last couple of years have presented the additional challenges of Covid, raw material shortages and price increases, huge hikes in shipping and transport costs.   But we’re still doing what we know and do best, and turning out our fabulous, innovative and unique net systems.