The T-WIN prototype presented to customers and the media

Awarded a prize last April 14th in the Machinery and Equipment section of the Metef 2010 Innovation Award, Danieli Breda's new press, T-WIN, was presented to customers and the media on November 25th during an open day which took place in Buttrio, at the Italian manufacturers headquarters. It was an intense afternoon which offers the opportunity to quickly present the Group and its history, to illustrate the innovative technical features of the T-WIN and to visit the company's facilities in Buttrio.
After a quick greeting by the President of Danieli & C. Gian-pietro Benedetti, the CEO of Danieli Milano, Stefano Deplano, spoke about the group's history, a history of innovation and success, first in the steel sector and later in the aluminium and other nonferrous metals sectors. In fact, the first electric furnace for steel dates back to 1914.
The division of the Danieli Group which specializes in the manufacture of hydraulic presses is Danieli Breda, based in Milan.
In 1950, the company started its activities in the field of hydraulic machinery for the extrusion of light metals, with the production of the first 500MT press for direct extrusion of aluminium profiles. In 1977 the first direct-indirect 5000 MT press with driller was produced for the Alcoa group. In 1983 the first complete line for extrusion was built for a Chinese company. A barrage of technological innovations and successes followed, leading to the big risk of 2010, the T-WIN press.
The Danieli Group, one of three largest manufacturers of equipment for the steel industry worldwide, has offices in Germany, the United States, Britain, France, Austria, Spain, India, Thailand and China. It also has service centres in Canada, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the UAE, Brazil, Japan, the Ukraine, Mexico, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
Today the group has - perhaps the only manufacturers - all available models of presses: long stroke, short stroke with rear-loading, short stroke with front-loading, and now the addition of the T-WIN.
Paolo Fraternale, Vice President and Sales Manager of Danieli Breda, explained how this new press operates and highlighted the advantages over traditional extrusion machines. The T-WIN press, the prototype of which we saw in operation without molten metal in the Danieli facilities, is equipped with a two-container device arranged transversely to the extrusion axis, with a reciprocating motion between one billet to be extruded and the other. Simultaneously with the movement of the containers, the blades installed on the mechanism cut the bottom/riser from the die. The machine - with a 22-24 MN clamping force - is a ‘mix’ between back loaded and front loaded presses.
The objective with which the Danieli Breda R&D department began studying the new press was to develop a new machine cycle by mediating the demand for oil of the cylinders between that needed during the downtime and that needed during the extrusion and optimizing downtime. The solution involves the reduction of the strokes and the number of cylinders engaged during downtime, modifying the shears, moving the billet directly from the oven/saw to the container, using less cycle oil by loading the billet during the extrusion process.
The resulting technical characteristics are the following: the absence of traditional shears, reduced billet/container tolerance, fast upsetting, longer container life, lower cycle oil consumption, and easier cleaning of the container.
By providing a set of comparison data between extrusion presses with front-loading (the fastest available on the market to date) and T-WIN, Paolo Fraternale showed that with the new machine it is possible to save 3 to 6 seconds of downtime for each billet extruded, despite having less installed capacity.
In the most conservative case, saving just 3 seconds when extruding 25 billets per hour for 20 hours per day (3 shifts) over 220 days a year, we arrive at an overall savings of 92 hours per year that, according to the calculations presented, result in a €680,000 increase in revenues and an added value of €130,000, assuming a processing cost of €0.7/kg. These numbers have to be doubled in case of 6 second saving, as in the most cases.
Among the future developments of the press there is the possible extension of the T-WIN technology to copper-brass and steel.