Waterjet Cutting Adds Splash to Vegas Casino

State-of-the-Art Waterjet Cutting Technology Used to Create Colorful Stained Glass Designs for Sunset Station Casino’s Swinging Gaudi Bar.

While Las Vegas has long been the “entertainment capital of the world,” the city’s casinos and hotels are quickly gaining notoriety for their unique architecture. With authentic designs from Italy, the Sahara Desert, Paris, Rio, and New York City being replicated throughout Vegas’ hotels and casinos, there is one that stands above the crowd: the Spanish influence in Sunset Station Hotel and Casino’s Gaudi Bar.

The heart and soul of Sunset Station is the Gaudi Bar, whose free-flowing, art noveau design was inspired by the renowned Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The design employs colorful psychedelic stained glass, ceramics, and tile reflecting the colors of Spain. To capture the style and flair of Gaudi, project architects Morris & Brown did their homework.

“The architects from Morris & Brown traveled throughout Spain studying the buildings, plazas, and architectural wonders of its small towns and major cities,” said Don Marrandino, vice president and general manager of Sunset Station. “Their knowledge of the country and attention to the most intricate design details have helped create one of the city’s most unique resorts. Architecturally, our Spanish/Mediterranean theme creates a comfort and elegance that raises off-Strip standards, from the Moroccan tile on our rooftops to the stained glass artistry of our masterpiece Gaudi Bar.”

The spotlight attraction of the Gaudi Bar is the 6,000 square foot stained glass ceiling that encompasses the 140-seat bar. The ceiling, which contains thousands of pieces of stained glass in a free-form mosaic and has absolutely no straight lines or right angles, is one of the largest stained glass ceilings in the U.S. Designed by Scott Avjian of Morris & Brown and Sue Grauten of Savoy Studios, the Gaudi Bar’s amoeba-shaped ceiling is the centerpiece attraction for the casino.

Savoy Studios, based in Portland, Oregon, had previously done design work for parent company Station Casino Inc.’s Kansas City Station Casino, and was again contracted by Station Casinos chairman Frank Fertitta and the architects Morris & Brown to create the Gaudi Bar’s ceiling. Since opening its doors 25 years ago, Savoy Studios has designed and produced stained glass works, such as ceilings and walls, for numerous clients in the hotel, restaurant, and casino industries. Savoy has completed a number of high-profile jobs for clients including Tavern on the Green and the Russian Tea Room in New York City, and the Taj Mahal, MGM Grand, and Luxor casinos in Las Vegas.

To produce the ceiling design, Savoy worked from both a model and from drawings. The architects sculpted a model of the ceiling and from there, Savoy worked closely with the casino’s security staff, fire suppression team, and electrical engineers to figure out placement of each stained glass panel. The goal for the design was to incorporate Sunset Station’s sunburst theme into the Gaudi design, which used no straight lines or right angles. The final design utilized an organic sunburst motif overlay on the Gaudi-type design.

Producing the stained glass pieces used in the ceiling design was no easy undertaking. In the past, Savoy had cut glass by hand. But, with a design of this complexity, cutting the pieces by hand was an impossible task. To cut the several hundred thousand stained glass pieces used in the Gaudi Bar ceiling, Savoy used an abrasive waterjet-cutting machine from Flow International Corporation, Kent, Washington. Savoy began using Flow’s Flying Bridge waterjet cutting machine four years ago, replacing the efforts of nearly 20 people needed to cut glass by hand in the past.

“Basically, we would not have been able to take on this project without the waterjet cutting machine, due to the complex curves of the stained glass design of the ceiling,” said Dan LeGree, president of Savoy Studios.

Abrasive waterjet cutting uses water pressurized to 60,000 pounds per square inch (psi), with a garnet abrasive entrained in the jet stream. The water is forced through a precision orifice 0.010 of an inch in diameter. The water and abrasive mixture quickly and precisely cut materials with an accuracy of +/- 0.005 inches. Waterjets are a cold-cutting process, which means they leave no heat-affected zone — crucial when cutting fine glass designs. Waterjets can also be a more cost-effective alternative because jobs that may normally take several minutes to complete can be cut in just seconds for greater productivity.

“The waterjets give us the capability to cut complex shapes with a high level of speed and accuracy,” added LeGree. “The speed of the waterjets was especially key to the Gaudi Bar project — we were able to complete the ceiling in three and a half months.”

To create designs with the waterjet machine, Savoy scans their drawings into their Westinghouse controller. Since each project design is stored in their computer system, Savoy categorizes and numbers each piece of glass, so if any pieces break, they can quickly and easily replicate each glass design to exact specifications on the waterjet machine.

More than 30 people from Savoy Studios worked around the clock to fabricate the 24,000-pound ceiling. Incorporated into the stained glass are more than 90,000 jewels of faceted, pressed glass, which were manufactured in Germany and air-freighted to Savoy in Portland.

Installation of the ceiling in 1997 occurred in different phases. First, the steel frame portion of the ceiling — from which the stained glass pieces were incorporated — was designed and fabricated by Rheil Industries in Portland, then shipped in sections and installed on site at the casino. Next, the stained glass panels, which were built over curved foam molds, were fabricated in Portland and shipped to the project site for installation by Savoy’s install team.

Once the ceiling was installed, LeGree said one of the challenges they faced was lighting. “We needed to have the ceiling evenly lit to showcase the stained glass and jewels,” said LeGree. “We were able to conquer our lighting challenge by alternating rows of long-life fluorescent lights and clear incandescent bulbs, which made the jewels in the stained glass really sparkle.”

Overall, the project was a huge success, and the staff at Sunset Station was very pleased with the results.

“The Gaudi Bar is beautifully designed — Savoy did a great job,” said Marrandino. “Our guests remark that it is one of the most amazing structures they’ve seen, and the ceiling really adds to the intimacy and fun of the casino.”

“We’re very proud of our artistic accomplishments with the Gaudi Bar,” said LeGree. “There is no other place like it in the West, or anywhere else for that matter. This project has been our most challenging because of the compound curves in the ceiling design. It was well worth the work, and we’re extremely pleased with the outcome.”

Story used with permission from www.flowcorp.com