Latest supply demonstrates that the Sacmi Group has completed and expanded its range of solutions for large fired slab finishing, ensuring flexibility, high automation and total quality control.

Sacmi’s range of ceramic slab/tile polishing and diamond-tipped brushing solutions continues to grow, as the latest order supplied by Nuova Sima (the Sacmi Group’s specialist provider of automated machining, inspection, handling and end-of-line solutions) to Iride (a pivotal long-standing ceramic machining player in the Sassuolo district that provides services to the industry’s biggest brands) clearly demonstrates.

Delivered at the start of the year and already running at full capacity, this complete line for the polishing/brushing of fired slabs includes solutions that complement the already tried-and-tested line of Sacmi-Nuova Sima unfired product cutting solutions. This new highly automated line features an automatic handling system that picks the tiles and feeds the polishing-brushing machine. The extremely innovative integrated machining centre is made up of two units, each equipped with 15 floating heads, a solution that allows effective, flexible management of widely differing products, including slabs as large as 1600×3200.

This solution – which works in concert with unfired product cutting systems already integrated into Sacmi’s CONTINUA+ large decorated ceramic slab manufacturing line – is extremely efficient and competitive as it can control, via the two machining units, complex polishing and brushing tasks on every type of commercially available surface and size. Downstream from the polisher-brusher lies another essential part of the order, the cutting line, which allows users to obtain the various sub-multiples starting from an already-treated surface (i.e. one ready for subsequent finishing, packaging and palletization).

A further essential element of the order supplied to Iride regards, in fact, final slab treatment: this solution, in addition to removing residual vitrified material, occludes the microporosity that can form on ceramic surfaces. Indeed, the latter often gives rise to the well-known problem of surface cleanability over time. With the Sacmi-Nuova Sima machine, instead, slabs offer excellent long-term cleanability, a key factor in laying and a significant source of added value, especially where tiles/slabs are used in high-traffic areas such as shops, airports and crowded public spaces.

Together with the polishing-brushing, cutting and finishing line, Nuova Sima also supplied – via the specialised Surface Inspection brand – six automatic inspection systems for checking size and colour: an effective solution that ensures products meet the required surface, size and colour specifications. Yet another distinctive feature, which together with high levels of line automation, ensures Iride can count on fully automatic total quality control, making it one of the very few outsourcers in the district capable of offering such advanced services.