CASE STUDY

Novellini | Aluminium Extrusion with N5Nitrogen

Novellini industries boost its productivity with N5Nitrogen implementation

The Italian company, Novellini Industries, part of the international Novellini Group, has taken far-reaching steps to significantly increase its productivity.

The main problem – micro-pickup

Aluminum profiles, produced by Novellini, to be PVD coated are extremely sensitive to surface defects, that, in case of micro-pickup, become visible only in the final processing step. This causes a huge waste of energy and resources as the resulting scrap had previously passed through all the production processes (raw material production, extrusion, brushing, polishing, and PVD coating).

The solution – N5Nitrogen targeted application

The company had focused its efforts on minimizing micro-pickup: a targeted application of our N5Nitrogen system reduced significantly the scrap.

Technical challenge

The challenge was to keep the extrusion within the expected range of temperature (525-545°C): Liquid Nitrogen was injected through proper channels in the die, avoiding micro-pickup generation. The target was achieved thanks to precise regulations of the Nitrogen flow ensured by N5Nitrogen, which also ensures full repeatability of the process, making the production parameters available for further analysis.

The N5Nitrogen Implementation

The entire project lasts about two months, including the initial tests, executed jointly by Novellini and Atieuno teams: periodic analysis of the production data after the go-live confirmed the achievement of the goals expected.

The results:

Thanks to the consulting and the services provided by Atieuno, together with N5Nitrogen implementation, Novellini reduced the surface defects, with global net productivity increased by 6%.
The production process has also been shortened by an entire working phase.
Profiles polishing before chroming has become superfluous, thanks to the high quality of the profiles
The scrap, caused by micro-pickup, has been reduced by more than 30%.
Energy savings – the elimination of an entire work phase, together with the overall scrap reduction, has led to significant energy savings, making Novellini products more sustainable.