It was 1748 when Jean-François Boch founded his ceramic workshop in the Lorraine region. Later, in 1789, Nicholas Villeroy started out in the world of ceramic decoration, founding his own workshop in Wallerfangen, now in the German region of Saarland. Today, the Villeroy&Boch Group is one of the world’s most renowned ceramic makers with a long history of investing in product and process innovation.
The Group commissioned another two Gaiotto robots from Sacmi. These machines prepare and glaze pieces by way of an automatic spraying process. Reliable, precise and efficient, this Gaiotto technology will allow the company to boost quality even further and achieve greater process flexibility and efficiency. With these latest two additions, the number of Gaiotto robots at the Mettlach production facility now rises to nine.
More specially, this latest Sacmi-supplied project is a two-step affair: a first GA 2000 robot installed on the new sorting line is dedicated to spraying fired items with a solvent-based product with a sanitising and anti-limescale function; a second workstation with another GA 2000 robot glazes the pieces using innovative technology.
Successfully tested and started up, these two robots feature the latest Sacmi-Gaiotto hardware and software: To start with, there is direct joystick control (with the panel already set up in German) and advanced spraying programmes containing every single parameter, all able to be customised according to specific manufacturing requirements that vary according to the type of article to be glazed.
This key order confirms Sacmi-Gaiotto as a pivotal partner dedicated to satisfying complex customer and market requirements. In addition to the acknowledged flexibility, efficiency and reliability of its individual robotized solutions, the Group stands out for its ability to design systems together with customers and provide advanced after-sales assistance services to maximise the return on investment.