Duravit impressed by Sacmi’s AVI Concept

Duravit impressed by Sacmi’s AVI Concept

Duravit, the world leader in high-quality, designer sanitaryware, has chosen the AVI Concept, the Sacmi–developed high pressure casting system that has revolutionised sanitaryware manufacturing. The new casting cell, equipped with two AVI units and a robot, was installed and successfully started up between April and May 2016 at the company’s main facility in Hornberg, Germany, in the heart of the Black Forest.

Launched on the market two years ago, AVI stands out from competitors’ solutions due to its excellent productivity and, more specifically, the revolutionary fast mould changeover system that slashes the time needed to change the mould - and thus start production of different article types – under one hour (as opposed to the several hours needed with traditional systems). It is these characteristics, together with the low maintenance requirements and AVI’s compatibility with existing moulds designed for AVM and AVE, that attracted the attention of this international high-quality sanitaryware brand.

The new casting cell with the two AVI solutions, which joins the two Sacmi AVM units already in use at the German firm for some years now, will be used to manufacture complex 7-part WCs with stick-on rims. Now, just a few months after start-up, the customer has expressed enormous satisfaction thanks to a series of AVI Concept plus-points; these range from a machine cycle of less than 20 minutes (in practice, these two newly installed solutions allow Duravit to produce a new article every 10 minutes) to the revolutionary fast mould changeover system (which really comes to the fore in the manufacture of complex WCs as it completely eliminates long manual handling tasks that provide little added value, tasks that can, with products like these, take several hours).

With the AVI Concept, all mould handling operations are managed by an anthropomorphous robot that can extract and handle all the mould parts, picking them directly from the machine. Further added value comes from AVI Concept’s compatibility with existing moulds originally designed for the AVM and AVE; Duravit is able to make good use of this advantage thanks to the previous installation of Sacmi AVM units and the availability of an extensive mould pool.

This order – placed by one of the industry’s brand leaders in terms of quality, design and manufacturing excellence – sees Sacmi reach for the future while drawing on over 30 years’ experience in the design and marketing of ceramic sanitaryware manufacturing solutions, especially as regards the development of the high pressure casting cells with which Sacmi leads the world. At the same time, this latest purchase reinforces a long-standing partnership between the Sacmi Group and Duravit; in addition to the AVI and AVM solutions already employed at the Hornberg plant Duravit has, in the past, also purchased a Sacmi AVE cell, currently installed at its French production facility, and robotized glazing solutions, the last of which was recently added to the Duravit plant in China.

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