Kee Klamp
Basic fitting
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| Invented by | George H. Gascoigne and colleagues |
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| Launch year | 1934 |
| Company | Gascoignes (Reading) Ltd. |
| Availability | Available |
| Website | keesafety |
A Kee Klamp is a structural pipe fitting commonly used in the construction of handrails and barriers. Fabricated installations comprise the fittings and separate tubing components, which can be sized on site.
The system was devised in 1934 and is made by a subsidiary of KIG Holdings. The fittings are mostly supplied to third parties for sale to fabricators, with a small proportion of sales being made internally to specialist divisions of the company.
The system was developed in 1934 by George H. Gascoigne and his colleagues in Reading, England for making cows' milking stalls. It was advertised to industrial chemists in 1944, marketed in the UK in the 1950s as a cattle control system, and used for storage systems in factories in the 1960s. By 1980 it was available in Canada, as noted by the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.
The system comprises unthreaded cast iron or aluminiumstructural tubing and slip-on structural pipe fittings. The galvanized malleable fittings provide resistance to corrosion and are secured to the tubes using set screws by use of a hex key.
Some cutting or bending of the tubes may be required while installing the system, according to site-specific circumstances. Skilled labourers such as welders are not required, but the material costs are higher for the Kee Klamp system. A contractor at the Long Island Rail Road described the system in 2007 as being "very simple to install".
Example uses of various derived systems are in guard rails and market stalls. More unusual uses have been seen in home shelving,kite buggying and the Rover chair.
In 2003, the company and a former competitor stated that such fittings were not being used in some countries in Europe, in favour of welding. This was due to lower labour costs. For uncomplicated installations, welding may be a cheaper solution than Kee Klamp, depending upon usage.
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Wikipedia