Since 1985, Aspir Mecc has been designing, producing, and installing extraction systems for treating and purifying air of fumes, dust, solvents, vapors, odors, exhaust gases and bacteria – pretty much everything that harms the environment and human health.
While keeping a craftsmanship's imprint, the company from Castel Viscardo (Terni) has in any case become the benchmark for the wood and ceramics industries in Umbria, Tuscany, and Lazio, manufacturing tailor-made systems. We met with the owner Carlo Graziani and his son Marco to talk about their production cycle.
All the advantages of a simple press brake
With a staff of 9, including the owner, and a turnover that has grown over the years, Aspir Mecc works with small and medium businesses by supplying them with HVAC systems and a complete, customized service from design to installation and assistance. The company was founded in 1985 from an idea of Carlo Graziani, who having gained extensive experience in the plant engineering industry, decided to start his own entrepreneurial journey.
“When I met my wife, her parents were partners in a company that produced extraction systems,” Graziani explains. “Although I was from Orvieto, I worked in Bologna: I quit my job and returned to Orvieto to work with them, mainly in the sales department. After about a year and a half, the company closed, but I can’t deny that by then the sheet metal industry had won me over, and I developed the idea of setting up my own business. With a partner, we decided to invest in some machinery and rent an industrial building: and that’s how Aspir Mecc was born, in 1985.”
These were the years of the second Italian economic miracle, the era of success for small businesses that led the economic recovery.
“We invested immediately in customization, designing tailor-made systems,” the owner continues. “We built our niche in the world of wood processing machinery, for historical reasons more than anything: the company I used to work for built extraction systems for carpentry shops. We produced the components with a manual press brake, which we still have today, a welding machine and a second-hand shear. We invested firstly in a second-hand press brake, a tube bending machine, a clinching machine and then, in 1993, the industrial building.”
Without its own sales network, Aspir Mecc focuses essentially on the central Italian market, building strong relations with some technology retailers who work with the company to produce their extraction systems. But this doesn't mean giving up completely on foreign markets.
“We have a major venture with a Swedish company that produces packaging machinery, which supplies its customers with bundles, including filters. We have installed a lot of systems for them, in Europe and beyond. But our market remains very much a local one: 80% of our systems are produced without a quote, as over time we have built loyal relations with our customers, they trust us. This result probably depends on our approach too because we only accept orders if we are sure that we can guarantee the result,” Graziani adds.
Close attention is paid in particular to the design of each plant: Aspir Mecc receives the machine specifications and a draft system layout, and then calculates load losses, the required surface area, and the motor required. With Industry 4.0, technological requirements are increasing: some elements – an electrical control cabinet with certain characteristics, a fire door, a spark detector – have become decisive in guaranteeing safety. Dust is potentially explosive, and the level of system complexity and the required certifications inevitably depend on the final application. The level of customization also affects the batch sizes and the production strategy: 4/6 panels per filter, plus the top and bottom, produced in kits and often in batch ones. The item turnover rate is quite high, and consequently so is the machine re-tooling frequency.
Precisely to manage this variability in production, in 2020 Aspir Mecc had to invest again in technology, in order to replace a press brake. After a careful assessment, the Terni-based company chose a Salvagnini B3: a hybrid press brake, designed by combining the characteristics and benefits of the most common electrical and hydraulic solutions on the market. It has a maximum bending force of 135 tons and maximum bending length of 4250 mm, with 7 axes and 4 backgauges to ensure maximum flexibility in production. It is equipped with FACE, Salvagnini's simple and intuitive new human-machine interface, which minimizes the operational complexity of the press brake. To meet the industry 4.0 paradigm, the B3 also has OPS, the modular software that optimizes the whole production process and monitors it by interacting with the company’s management software and ERP/MRPs.
“Salvagnini was quite a revelation for me,” Graziani tells. “We had an old press brake, with 4 axes and hydraulic crowning, made by a company that doesn’t exist anymore. Of course, we had heard of Salvagnini, but it was a brand we had never considered: we thought it was a premium manufacturer, and too expensive for our needs. We had already begun talks with several Italian firms, then Renato Segoloni – the Salvagnini sales agent in our area - came to visit us. A little against our will, we accepted an invitation to visit the Salvagnini Campus: it was a real turning point, and a visit I would recommend to anyone. They told us about the machinery and the software and were extremely competent. We were quickly convinced by the technical features of the B3 press brake. But we also visited the Salvagnini Robotica production site, and we spoke to the people working in the service department - that’s always been a bit of a fixation for me, something fundamental when choosing a machine tool. And Salvagnini also has the advantage of producing technology for practically all the sheet metal forming cycle: if we need a laser or a panel bender tomorrow, we know we can rely on them again. And this is also a huge advantage, because the technologies of the same manufacturer dialog better with each other, and the technicians find it easier to use the software and the HMI interfaces are very similar.”
For Aspir Mecc, choosing the B3 also meant opting for STREAMFORMER, Salvagnini’s proprietary CAM. STREAMFORMER is part of STREAM, the programming suite for managing all activities in the office and on the factory floor, a single point of access for all technologies, from cutting to bending, meeting all planning, programming, production, management, control, and optimization needs throughout the production process.
“Today we program everything in the office,” says Marco Graziani, Carlo’s son and the second generation in the company. “Our process starts with a 2D drawing. Having analyzed it, STREAMFORMER automatically proposes the ideal bending sequence. It’s a really useful support, especially for more complex parts, and of course in any case I can change the sequence if I need to. A side effect of programming in office is that it also helps to reduce the tool set-up time: we already know which punch we need, where it has to be positioned, we have no doubts over the process and so we avoid mistakes and wasted time. This approach certainly helps operators with less experience. But generally, it’s really simple to switch from the office to the workshop: the press brake is really precise, intuitive and high-performing. With the HMI interface, all the commands are available in just a few clicks.”
“At first, we imagined that we would have some waste, but we’ve never thrown even one piece away. This means that the software is intuitive, and those who use it can easily see how to use it in the best way. Every afternoon we also program the work for the next morning; the operators find the cut materials and the bending program in the machine. And we have an archive of completed programs, which is really useful if we need to repeat the production in future. At Salvagnini, I saw something that helps our evolution, our future. I was really impressed with the reliability of the company, it’s something I recognize in us. And the installation confirmed this impression: it was completely managed by in-house staff, which is a further guarantee. And the sales philosophy is very similar to mine: it was a transparent, honest process focusing on my needs and not on the desire to maximize profits. This is the same approach I use with our customers. I didn’t just buy a product, I bought a relationship with a reliable supplier,” Graziani concludes.