Italy and ice cream - they belong together. So it's no wonder that 30 KraussMaffei employees in Abbiategrasso, Italy, are working on equipment for freezers, white goods and insulation technology. The basic technology is polyurethane foaming - but KraussMaffei Italiana (KMI) offers much more. It produces turnkey, customised complete systems for the manufacturing of polyurethane components for a wide variety of applications: from refrigerator housings and doors, cold rooms and refrigerated counters to sandwich panels with PUR cores for the construction industry and refrigerated trucks.
KMI's end products can be found wherever items with a PUR insulation layer between two walls (made of metal or plastic) are required.
The main areas of application are freezers and refrigerators for food retail or private use, cold storage rooms, hot water generators and tanks, as well as front doors, roof and wall panels. KMI's customers include the world's largest manufacturers in the household appliance sector.
“Dry side” plus automation
The subsidiary was founded in 2002 and Gabriele Amodeo was the first employee at the time: “Italy is traditionally strong in the production of white goods, so it makes sense for us to concentrate on the "specialities" here, while our colleagues in Munich look after the automotive sector.”
In terms of PUR processing, the team in Milan dedicates its 1,800 square meters of production space to the "dry side" production. This refers to the moulding part within the production plant plus automation. The "wet side", i.e. dosing machines, mixing heads and supply technology, is supplied by the mother house in Germany.
Refrigerated housings of all kinds are produced in two- or four-column mould carriers, so-called fixtures. This equipment needs robust, solid construction with precisely aligned plates in order to properly withstand the high pressure generated by polyurethane rigid foam - typical for insulation - during the reaction phase and ensure dimensional accuracy and aesthetic quality of the final products.
Depending on the quantity required for the end product, KMI's engineering team develops complete production lines with one or more fixtures. The focus is on speed, precision, durability, short cycle times, ease of maintenance and fully automated operation, if requested. The geometry of the fixtures can be adjusted in less than a minute and cores can be changed just as quickly.
Circulation systems for doors
For the production of refrigerator doors, KMI offers drum-shaped units with up to eight stations, whereby one station is always used for loading/unloading and inserting the PUR, while the others are used for the reaction time. The parts are again removed fully automatically.
However, the trend in door production is towards so-called circulation systems, which enable a particularly high output. Here, the mould carriers are positioned in a row and the doors pass through an oven section after foaming, within which the chemical reaction takes place with no cycle time impact.
Development of complete production lines
The spatial dimensions of the systems from Abbiategrasso are impressive: for the commercial refrigeration sector there are mould carriers up to eight meters long and 2.4 meters wide, while for high-volume household appliance products several fixtures work side by side.
As well-insulated side walls are suitable for many applications (such as refrigerated truck bodies), KMI offers systems for the discontinuous production of panels up to 17 meters long and with a foam thickness of ten to 250 millimeters. Other common areas of application for the KMI repertoire are hot water tanks and even front doors. Concepts with six tool carriers have already been realised here.
For Airton Oliveira (Sales Manager KMI), the most important thing is advising the customer: “We have so much experience that we can tailor the production concept precisely to their needs, both for small and large-scale production.”
Single source supply
A major advantage for the customer is that the entire production line is supplied from a single source. For a consistently high-quality process chain, KMI delivers all the units for the wet and dry sections of the system.
Everything fits together seamlessly - from premixing stations, mixing and dosing technology and mixing heads to mould carriers, foaming tools, tool changing systems and automation. Jens Kompe (Director Sales RPM) adds: “This gives the customer the certainty that everything is perfectly harmonised. Our products are technically mature and have been tried and tested on the market for a long time.”
The experts from KraussMaffei Italiana will therefore continue to provide sufficient cooling in hot summers.
