Schuler and its affiliate Farina have demonstrated the world’s largest mechanical forging line to an international group of 60 forging experts.
A live video stream transmitted from the production site in Suello close to Milano showed the impressive features of the 16 000 ton press with a stroke of 600 mm in action. It will be delivered to the German company thyssenkrupp Gerlach.
“Neither Farina nor Schuler alone would have been able to set up a machine in such a short time”, Schuler’s sales manager Klaus Berglar-Bartsch pointed out. “We put all our engineering resources together to make it happen.” Thanks to the Scotch Yoke design, the press with a total height of 14 meters is much smaller than conventional ones. This also enables high off-center loads, a high number of strokes and an extraordinary high precision.
From the outside, the GLF type machine looks like a conventional press including the flywheel, clutch and crown gear. However, in its heart, the Scotch Yoke directly works in the slide, which is the reason for the compact design. The massive press with a total weight of some 1850 tons further consists up of a table in cast steel design as well as welded uprights.
Project completed in only 26 months
“We collected the order in April 2019”, Farina’s general manager Marco Gritti told the participants of the video conference. “In December 2019, the design has been made, and we started to place orders at our suppliers.” The main parts arrived in spring of 2020, in the very beginning of the Corona pandemic. Nevertheless, Farina started the assembly in September of last year and managed to finish it in January: “It’s been a tough time”, Gritti remembered. In the middle of April, all parts arrived on site in Germany ready for installation. Overall, the project was completed in only 26 months.
During the demonstration, the machine was running at its half speed of 16 strokes per minute. The online audience could see that the fly wheel is installed exactly in the middle of the crown: “This permits the press to be more precise in the forging process”, Gritti explained. “The accuracy of parts is therefore higher than with a traditional press.”
Because of the Scotch Yoke design, the press force of 16 000 tons provided by an 800 KW drive is available 500 mm to the right and left. “The marriage with Schuler in 2018 permitted Farina to grow and penetrate new markets in other parts of the world”, Gritti made clear. “This project is a direct result.” According to him, the next step might as well be the construction of 20 000 ton mechanical forging press.
