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Purpose-made sections that sit outside the standard families: handrail and toe board profiles, knurled tube and roadside posts. For geometries the catalogue cannot cover, we cut the die and produce a section made for you. Pultruded by NA-ME Composite.
↳ if the section is not in the catalog, we cut the die
Alongside the standard structural shapes we run a family of purpose-made sections — the CPS group — where each profile exists to do one specific job on a platform, a walkway, a stair or a roadside.
The structural families are general by design. A channel, an angle, a beam or a box will go into almost anything, and the buyer picks a size against a span and a load. Special sections work the other way round. The shape is already an answer to a question: how a hand grips a rail, how a boot is stopped at a platform edge, how a tube stays grippable when it is wet, how an edge trim catches a panel without a second part. You do not size these against a bending calculation so much as select them against a detail.
The family covers five recognisable types that carry catalogue dimensions — handrail profiles, toe boards, knurled tube, a roadside post and a tailed angle — plus items that are made to a drawing rather than to a size, such as ship's ladders and assembled handrail runs. All of them are pultruded on the same line, from the same resin systems, as the rest of the range.
↳ looking for a tee section? we do not run a standard tee die — send the dimensions and we will quote one
The top member of a guard rail: the part a hand actually closes around. It is not round tube, and that is deliberate. The section is shaped so that it can be gripped along its length, so that it seats correctly on the stanchions beneath it, and so that it does not roll in the hand when somebody is steadying themselves in a hurry. We hold five sections in this type, running from 50 × 46 × 4 mm up to 75 × 62 × 4 mm, which covers most standard guard rail geometry. Because the profile is GRP it stays comfortable to touch in cold weather and in direct sun, where a steel or aluminium rail does not, and it will not rust at the one place where hands and weather meet the structure most often.
The upstand at the edge of a platform or walkway that stops a foot, a tool or a dropped fitting from going over the side. Three sections: a 100 × 100 × 3 mm angle-form board, a 150 × 3 mm flat upstand and a 150 × 15 × 5 mm section with a return. Toe boards live along the wettest and dirtiest line of any platform, exactly where grit and washings collect — which is exactly where a painted steel plate begins to corrode first and where inspection is most awkward.
Tube with a textured outer surface: a 30 mm round section and a 36 × 27 mm section, both with a 3 mm wall. The knurling exists to raise grip when the surface is wet, greasy or being handled with gloves, which is why it turns up on grab rails, stair handrails, stanchion tops and handles rather than in structural framing.
A 100 mm section with a 3 mm wall, for edge marking and delineation. The argument for composite here is durability and electrical behaviour rather than strength: the post does not corrode at the ground line, which is where a galvanised post fails first, and it conducts nothing back to whatever hits it or whatever is buried beside it.
A 40 × 40 × 6 mm angle with a tail on one leg — an angle and a fixing detail in a single pultrusion, so that a cover, a panel or an edge trim can be caught without a second component and a second line of fixings. It is a small saving per metre and a large one across a building.
Dimensions and weight per metre for the sections we hold as standard dies. Every one of them is available in all six resin systems; the section number and the weight per metre do not change when the resin does.
| Code | Section type | A (mm) | B (mm) | Wall t (mm) | Weight (kg/m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPS-O-101 | Knurled tube | 30 | - | 3 | 0.45 |
| CPS-O-102 | Knurled tube | 36 | 27 | 3 | 0.68 |
| CPS-O-110 | Handrail profile | 50 | 46 | 4 | 1.25 |
| CPS-O-111 | Handrail profile | 63 | 43 | 3 | 1.05 |
| CPS-O-112 | Handrail profile | 63 | 46 | 4 | 1.27 |
| CPS-O-113 | Handrail profile | 75 | 50 | 3 | 1.15 |
| CPS-O-114 | Handrail profile | 75 | 62 | 4 | 1.43 |
| CPS-O-120 | Toe board profile | 100 | 100 | 3 | 1.13 |
| CPS-O-121 | Toe board profile | 150 | - | 3 | 1.01 |
| CPS-O-122 | Toe board profile | 150 | 15 | 5 | 1.53 |
| CPS-O-130 | Roadside post | 100 | - | 3 | 0.56 |
| CPS-O-140 | Tailed angle | 40 | 40 | 6 | 1.40 |
↳ codes are shown in the O grade — swap the middle letter for Z, V, OA, ZA or VA
NA-ME cuts its own dies, and that is the reason this family exists at all — every profile in the list above started as somebody's drawing. If your detail is not on the list, the route is well worn:
The commercial logic is straightforward. A die is a one-off cost and a repeating section is not, so the route pays where the quantity justifies it — and we will say so honestly when it does not, rather than selling tooling into a job that would be better served by a standard shape. How pultrusion works explains why the die is the fixed point in the whole process.
Two things in this family carry no catalogue dimension, because they are not single profiles. Ship's ladders — steep access ladders with rungs, stringers and handrails — are built to the opening and the rise they serve. Handrail assemblies are the same story: stanchions, top rail, mid rail, toe board and fixings, cut and set out to a run rather than sold by the metre.
These are where the special sections meet the rest of the range: a handrail profile on top, a knurled tube or a box section as the stanchion, a toe board at deck level, angles and channels making the connections. If an assembled system is what you are actually buying, the GRP handrail and platform systems page is the better starting point — it deals with the system, the fixings and the set-out rather than with individual profiles. Installation and fastening covers how these are cut, drilled and bolted on site, including sealing the cut faces, and the structural shapes overview covers the channels, angles and boxes that go around them.
Special sections run on the same programme as everything else, which means the same six resin systems: orthophthalic, isophthalic and vinyl ester, each in a standard and a flame-retardant grade. For handrails and toe boards outdoors, an isophthalic grade with a surface veil is the common pairing. For the same detail inside a treatment plant, vinyl ester earns its cost. Nothing about the shape restricts that choice — see GRP resin systems for how to place your environment, and surface veil, UV and fire for the surface side of the decision.
Two material properties matter more in this family than in general framing. These are parts that people touch, and GRP has low thermal conductivity and does not conduct electricity, so a rail does not become painful in the sun or in a frost and does not carry current. And these are parts that get hit, splashed and stood on at the edge of a structure, which is where corrosion normally starts on a metal system and where a composite section simply has nothing to give up.
For a standard section the code or the dimensions are enough. For anything else, tell us what the profile has to do — what it carries, what it stops, what grips it, what it fixes to — and send a sketch, a drawing or a sample of what you are replacing. If a new die is needed we will say so, quote it, and put a pre-production length in your hands before anything is committed to production.