The obvious purpose of cambering is, to take straight steel beams and convert them to vertical arcs. Steel members produced in a steel mill have at least some camber and some sweep. In the world of structural steel, camber denotes a curve in the vertical plane sweep denotes a curve in the horizontal plane. A steel beam is placed in a cambering machine – often built by the fabricator – with pivot points about 20 feet apart and a pair of hydraulic jacks centered at two points about 6 feet apart.
Members specified with no camber must be erected with any natural mill camber in the up- ward direction.Ĭold bending is the most common method to induce camber in a member, and it usually involves the use of brute force. For a 30' span this works out to be 3⁄8”. This standard gives a maximum natural mill camber or sweep for any beam as 1⁄8” times the length of the beam in feet divided by 10. How do you calculate camber on a steel beam?
