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COMPANY NEWS
SD Meccanica: Building the Future
Michele di Uffici (Left) and Leonardo Cappucino MD (right)
SD Meccanica has been around for a long time, but it was only from 2009 that the company was driven to promote its services to the wider market. As an engineering and fabrication firm SD Meccanica had long been a sub-contractor to a larger tyre operation based in Rovereto, Marangoni Meccanica.
Marangoni Meccanica had long been involved in the R&D for tyre equipment, for new and retread tyres, but for many, many years the manufacture of the retread equipment was contracted out to SD Meccanica who earned the vast majority of their business from Marangoni building ring builders, buffers and shearography equipment for the bigger company, which was focussing its engineering division on the new tyre sector. When Marangoni bought TRM, yet another Rovereto based retread engineering firm, the retread equipment manufacturing was naturally transferred to TRM, leaving SD Meccanica with a large hole in its business to fill.
So SD Meccanica opened its doors and started selling and promoting to the tyre sector, and diversified into other fabrication work at its second plant.
Michele De Uffici explained that the company had built a reputation for servicing and refurbishing equipment at its Rovereto plant and it used this to build a future for itself without the contract with Marangoni. Asked if SD Meccanica did site servicing, Michele responded, "No, we bring plant back here for a complete refurbishment, when it leaves here it looks like new."
Michele showed Retreading Business around the factory which was full of ongoing projects, refurbs, and new. "We build everything for our own equipment, we manufacture the chassis here and we design and engineer both the mechanical and the electrical components of the equipment. Our experience tells us what will work in which job. For example we are proud to be able to produce equipment that is much more energy efficient than has been traditionally possible."
For a small company there was a great deal of work going on, including the development of two new projects. One a new concept in buffing equipment, that is quicker than the traditional buffer, more energy efficient and which produces a quality crumb. The machine is designed to buff the sidewalls, then mill off the bulk of the tread, before finishing with a traditional cutter head. Waste is removed by vacuuming and screw drives in the lower hopper aid in removing debris, making the machine cleaner to use, and ultimately safer. Another development, the Crater tyre repair machine was under development. Essentially
an automated, computer controlled skiving machine that scans the casing, identifies areas that need skiving and automatically skives and fills them, the system has been proven to be capable of identifying repairs, skiving and filling them. The last challenge in developing the process is attaining the accuracy of depth and dealing with exposed tyre wires, but Michele De Uffici is confident that the challenge will be met by the end of the year.
The Crater was initially being designed for skiving and filling of truck tyres, but demand from the OTR sector has led to the development of a fully robotised arm for working on OTR tyres.
However, on OTR tyres the system has an added advantage, one that has been developed at the behest of the OTR sector, it is capable of automatically regrooving OTR tyres.
Michele explained, "The OTR tyre, when it has very little tread depth left has quite some additional depth of rubber remaining on the casing. For various reasons it can be too difficult, or impossible to retread some of these casings, but regrooving by up to 20mm
gives the operator considerable savings. So the OTR version
can be used for skive filling and for regrooving OTR tyres." Asked whether the state of the economy had an impact upon the level of business, Michele said that now people were having to refurbish or renew equipment and that as a consequence business was better than the economy might suggest. He added that the company has also diversified into other areas, taking on contracts to assemble other projects such as water fountains. Assembling drinking water fountains may seem a far cry from building tyre buffing equipment but it is lighter engineering and high volume so it keeps staff employed.
SD Meccanica's equipment can be found throughout the retread sector and includes monster OTR buffing equipment, and the company is working hard at introducing new technologies and new ideas that will make tyre retreading more efficient and more effective.
Typical re-engineered equipment from SD Meccaninica
20 Retreading Business