Long-standing SACMI customer, based in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, is now investing in fully automated glazing lines to improve both product quality and process efficiency.

With SACMI Sanitaryware 4.0, the glazing line merges seamlessly with a complete automated piece handling ‘ecosystem’. The result: outstanding quality and consistently higher logistical efficiency.

Hence S.I.D.C. (Saudi Industrial Development Company) CASAVIA‘s latest investment in the manufacturing facility at Yanbu, located on the Red Sea. Established in the 1990s with SACMI technology (both the traditional and high pressure casting units are still fully operational, as is the original glazing line), the company is now looking to strengthen its role on the local market and expand on export markets thanks to the higher quality and efficiency provided by these new SACMI solutions.

At the heart of the line lies the GA2000 robot, which features self-learning programming yet can also be programmed off-line. Equipped with a mass control system and a dry filtration booth to retrieve excess glaze, the line ensures excellent piece quality and low glaze consumption. What’s more, the glaze is applied with a SACMI GDA 80, a needleless glazing gun characterised by excellent usability, efficiency and zero maintenance.

The glazing station is served by a complete handling system consisting of a belt conveyor, a three-axis transfer unit (which picks the piece from the belt and places it on the 2-position carousel for subsequent transfer to glazing) and an outfeed belt. At the end of the line a bar conveyor transfers the pieces directly to the kiln car loading zone without any need for manually operated trolleys, ensuring workers no longer have to perform laborious, low-added-value tasks. Completing the new glazing line are an inspection booth, and two offline semi-automatic siphon glazing units.

Designed to handle and glaze pieces of every kind, these latest solutions will also be used by S.I.D.C. CASAVIA to produce large, complex wall-hung and one-piece WCs, items with a high unit weight that benefit enormously from this enhanced level of automation.