Salvagnini boasts over 40 years of expertise and skill in the field of automatic bending, with 4000 installations in 76 countries worldwide. And the panel bender is the machine which more than any other represents the spirit of the Group, as it is able to combine cutting-edge technology with sustainability, productivity and flexibility.

 

Since 1977, the year in which Guido Salvagnini designed and built the first model of P4, the panel bender has never stopped evolving: today it is a solution with proven reliability, an automatic machine in all aspects and ideal for a modern smart factory. Recently it was re-industrialized and further improved, with the joint efforts of two of the Group's production poles: Ennsdorf, the world’s largest panel bender production site, and Sarego, which specialises in the P4 series with maximum bending heights of 254 mm. A total of over 600 specialist technical personnel work in the engineering department and on the shop floor.

 

Productivity and adaptivity are their common cornerstones

 

“For us, at least, in terms of the available solutions, panel bending is a broad issue that may seem complex,” explains Nicola Artuso, Salvagnini Product Manager. “In actual fact, our product range is based on assumptions that are common to all models.” 

 

The first cornerstone is productivity: every Salvagnini panel bender, whatever the model chosen, performs an average of 17 bends a minute. This result is achieved thanks to the automatic bending cycles and the universal bending tools.

 

“It is fundamental to underline that our panel bender requires no re-tooling,” Artuso continues. “The upper and lower blades, the counterblade and the blankholder are universal tools that are able to process the whole range of thicknesses and machinable materials. These tools, combined with an automatic ABA blankholder, which adapts the length of the tool to the size of the part to be produced, in-cycle, without machine downtimes or manual re-tooling, make the panel bender the ideal solution for batch-one and kit production.”

 

It is worth remembering that every one of the 15 models available can be configured and customized with numerous options, to respond to a variety of production needs. Following an in-depth feasibility study, Salvagnini accompanies each customer in the choice of the most suitable panel bender, according to variables including production strategies, field of application, level of automation required for loading and unloading the semi-finished parts, any options for achieving full versatility and, if necessary, types of auxiliary products such as cutting, punching and press bending, allowing the panel bender to express its productivity to the full.

 

“The second cornerstone is adaptivity,” Artuso continues. Each panel bender integrates advanced sensors that measure the actual thickness and effective size of the blank, detecting any malformations caused by variations in temperature. The data are fed in real time into the bending formula, which defines the correct force to apply to the sheet metal, guaranteeing the precision, repeatability and quality of the finished product.”

 

MAC 2.0 works with the same logic. It is the set of integrated technologies – sensors, formulas and algorithms – that make the panel bender intelligent. It eliminates waste and reduces corrections, measuring in-cycle and automatically compensating any variability in the material being machined. 

 

“With a view to factory adaptivity, on the other hand, the panel bender can be equipped with our OPS proprietary software, used to communicate with the factory ERP,” Artuso concludes. “According to need, OPS manages the production of sequences of different parts, and the panel bender immediately responds to requests with its universal bending tools and the automatic in-cycle set-up.”

 

Sustainable technology

 

Salvagnini lean panel benders use only electric actuators with no hydraulics. Bending cylinders are driven by brushless motors, which offers great advantages in terms of the reduced wear and deterioration of components that, unlike in other similar technologies, are no longer subjected to continuous extreme stress over and over on the same point. The masked-time cycles and drive wiring help to use all the absorbed energy in the best way, without returning it to the grid and without it being dissipated as heat. Not to mention the fact that lean technology assures savings of 95,700 liters of oil per year.

 

“But the sustainability of this technology is best understood by turning it into real numbers,” Artuso explains. “Considering the panel benders sold since we introduced lean technology in 2014, and estimating the use of the systems over a single shift, we can say that we have saved at least 52.2GWh – the equivalent of the annual consumption of 21,000 people in Italy – and have reduced CO2 emissions by around 22,000 tons.”

 

And there’s more: the whole production chain has adopted a more sustainable philosophy. The Salvagnini plants where the panel benders are built have renewed their lighting and HVAC systems, thus reducing their annual environmental impact by over 160 tons of CO2.