New Handling Lines for Dried and Fired Roofing Tiles
Sustainability and environmental safeguard are increasingly becoming fundamental concepts not only at international level, but also in our daily lives. The two terms, synonyms of wellness, pollution prevention and energy efficiency are among the philosophies of Bedeschi, the Italian company, which has made of sustainable models one of the main objectives of its business. Lately, the whole equipment designed and conceived by the company is intended to limit as much as possible the negative impacts on the ecosystem.
The recent global pandemic COVID-19 and the consequent lockdown, which involved many countries across the world, has strengthened Bedeschi’s idea that embracing a greener city approach is very important in construction sector. Surely, this will not prevent the pandemic, but at least it contributes to survive unexpected situations. For this reason, Bedeschi is strongly engaged in the revolution of the construction sector for the future. It is important to start from the production of materials and machines that will contribute to create more inclusive housings, able to accommodate also vulnerable people and in compliance with the standards of a more sustainable approach.
Bedeschi engineers have recently developed new efficient and innovative solutions for their clients of the company´s Business Unit Bricks. The latest high-tech machines have been designed in compliance with the strict standards required in terms of capacity and quality, compatible with Industry 4.0. Among these machines, the new tilting line as well as the binding line with stainless steel wire for roofing tiles and ridge tiles deserve to be mentioned. The new tilting line has been developed following a challenge thrown down by the client: to pass both roofing tiles and ridge tiles through the same machine. The former equipment did not allow this and manual labor was required for loading the ridge tiles by hand. Usually, the ridge tiles have a separate line as they need particular movements for allowing them to be stacked on the kiln cars. Therefore, Bedeschi has designed a double coil binding system with pre-tension of the wire in the closing phase and modulation of the tightening controlling the rotations of the twister.
There is also a sensor system that identifies “skein finished” and “skein anomaly” (for example in presence of a knot). This permits a quick intervention of the operator for restoring the process to normality. For the discharge of fired roofing tiles, there has also been introduced an innovation which allows the automatic singularization of the roofing tiles, with the aim of reducing manual work and increasing the facilities’ safety. The new singularization vacuum gripper for fired roofing tiles with high-intensity production type SV3000 is used for transferring the products on a line for continuous transition – the material is singularized in order to select the faulty parts to eliminate.
Traditionally, the machine for singularization is equipped with a mechanical gripper which picks up the roofing tiles by pinching them on the sides and deposit them on the belts.
However, this system induces many reliability problems during the pick-up step with frequent stoppage of the machine for restoring the working conditions.
The new Bedeschi SV3000 gripper is the result of the client’s need for a simple and reliable machine that practically never stops and is able to handle roofing tiles of different shapes.
Bearing this in mind, Bedeschi engineers recognized the gripper as the weakest part of the machine because the material is not always easy to pick-up due to the different shapes, dimensions and pick-up position. Moreover, it happens that there are broken pieces or damaged pieces that break during pick-up. Bedeschi solved this issue with a suction cups system applied to an optimized mechanical cam able to pick-up the material every 1,2 s. The suction cups guarantee a 96 % efficiency of gripping, thus limiting maintenance time and optimizing the productivity of the machine. Bedeschi´s engineers studied the vacuum circuit for guaranteeing the repeatability of the pick-up in the timing established, preserving the duration of the pump and of the other components. The new geometric form of the cam allows a very gentle approach for the pick-up. This avoids impacts between the machine and the product and preserving thus its integrity and aesthetics. Only in the last 10 months, Bedeschi has delivered and commissioned 5 machines SV3000 to the full satisfaction of its clients.
The roofing tiles, after a visual and acoustic control, are stacked into bundles, packed with straps and arranged into lines ready to be palletized by a robot. The anthropomorphic robot takes the wooden pallet, organizes the roofing tiles in layers, places the vertical interlayer between the two rows and the horizontal interlayer between the two layers. Finally, the package is covered with a shrinking plastic wrap, placed on the fork lift and moved to the delivery zone.