TECNOMEC: Success story in Italy

Floor type boring & milling machine with extremely long RAM output

Tecnomec is a 360º subcontractor working for different industries in Asti, Italy. It needed a nonstandard machine with a large RAM travel. JUARISTI offered it an original solution thanks to its flexible machine concept, adapting one of its most outstanding solutions (MX-RAM) to the customer’s constructive needs.

In the Piedmont region, in the middle of an impressive landscape made up of small villages perched on rolling hills and vineyards, there is also room for industry, which is clustered on the outskirts of the main cities. In these places, a short walk takes you right to a large number of machining workshops. Most are subcontractors working for the region’s leading industry, one of Italy’s most prolific exporters, perhaps because of its strategic location along the French-Swiss border.

Piedmont is known for its wine making industry, the second most powerful in the country after Tuscany, and also the food industry –with the giant Ferrero as the greatest example. However, there is no doubt that Fiat is indeed its most emblematic company. They are the main customers of machining subcontractors, which are located specifically around Turin and Asti, the two main cities in the region.

Tecnomec is located just outside Asti, a family workshop dedicated to intricate carpentry and machining that for two generations has provided 360º machining services to the principal local industries. Its extensive experience has led it to gradually achieve larger and more complex orders, forcing it to progressively introduce more powerful machinery.

Thus, in 2017 Tecnomec already had 6 Machine Tools, but they needed to take a step forward in quality and integrate a high performance milling and boring center and non-standard features. According to Diego Amerio, the company’s manager, they imagined a large machine that would have a 2,500 mm RAM cross travel. However, when they surveyed the main producers in the sector regarding whether it would be possible to set up such a center with these characteristics, most answered that such a machine was not feasible to build. “Everyone took a step back except JUARISTI”, he says.

When JUARISTI received the customer’s request, the Projects Committee met to study the viability of the project and the possible solutions to the challenges posed by Tecnomec. In the end, despite the order’s demanding requirements, it resolved to make an ad-hoc configuration of the MX9, a milling-boring machine with a travelling column and central head, with symmetrical structure and box-in-box design.

A Y-axis travel like never seen before

The machine produced for Tecnomec features an unprecedented innovation in the sector, a RAM with a 2,500 mm Y-axis travel, which enables milling and boring operations with an exceptional parts adaptability. Built in GJS700 nodular, it has four-sided linear guiding and, given the impressive RAM travel, it also has a double RAM drop compensation system, consisting of a connecting rod system to compensate for torsional deformation.

It also includes a second hydraulically operated pulley system controlled by a complex algorithm that, depending on the RAM position, exerts different traction forces. According to Amerio, the MX9’s performance convinced them from the start. “Thanks to this configuration, we were able to start working with a travelling column machine on jobs that were only possible with bridge-type milling machines. This allowed us to speed up production and radically improve our productivity”.

One of the reasons for the project’s success, as Amerio puts it, was the strong commitment of all JUARISTI team members to create a configuration that would best suit its needs: “We met people, not just producers or designers. We talked to them extensively about our needs throughout the design phase and were always sure that the project would meet our demands and that we would achieve awesome results”.

All-in-one automation package

One of the clearest needs of the Tecnomec managers was to improve their productivity rate. To do so, JUARISTI recommended the deployment of several automated systems to reduce downtime.

Thus, the MX9 was delivered with two milling heads, one horizontal and one universal automatic, with automated recalibration in case of impacts and a refrigerated oil system to increase its service life. Thanks to these advantages, the operator’s job of ensuring proper maintenance boils down to checking that oil reserves are at optimum levels.

On the other hand, there should be highlighted some outstanding automation systems such as the automatic head changer, the work piece position verification probe and a special software for controlling the work-table that adapts the X, Y, Z, B, C, A axes movements according to the way in which the workpiece is placed.

Amerio believes that automated systems have helped them dramatically reduce machining times. “The most impressive thing was to see the idea we had imagined become a reality, especially when other producers had told us that such a machine would never be reliable. What JUARISTI has achieved
is not only a reliable machine, but also an accurate machine with very high productivity rates. Impeccable. The service was impeccable from start to finish”.