EUROBOIS PRIMULTINI SPOTLIGHT

At Eurobois, at the Primultini dealer VBI stand, which brings together a true cluster of primary woodworking professionals, we met Giovanni Ca­nova, sales director of the historic Italian group with over a century of sawmill experience.

Pietro Ferrari – Primultini’s presence in France is historic…

Giovanni Canova – … and as such, it’s recognized: we can say that French customers know Primultini and appreciate our machinery, and we can also speak enthusiastically of our equally historic dealer VBI, with whom we are completing major projects in France.

Pietro Ferrari – I see you’re able to provide a turnkey sawmill through the coordination of several partners…

Giovanni Canova – Exactly: we focus on sawmill machinery, and we offer log band saws, multi-rip saws, and edgers; However, through our partners, we are able to provide everything that completes a sawmill, from log incoming to final stacking. With the acquisition of the Bongio­anni brand, we have integrated valuable expertise and completed our product portfolio. In terms of quality and reliability, we have chosen to maintain entirely in-house production: from the flywheel lathe to the CNC machining centers, all the way to trained and experienced operators. This allows us direct and constant control over the absolute quality of the machines.

Pietro Ferrari – So, a concrete proposal that expresses the ad­vantage of having a single supplier to interface with.

Giovanni Canova – Like Primultini, we also have partnerships with other project players – for example, Microtec. Our customers ask us for increasingly advanced automation and scanning systems: we offer our 3D log reading systems, which are highly regarded by the market, but those who want to go even further can count on a very effective collabo­ration with Microtec, which has proven extremely high-performance in many applications.

Pietro Ferrari – What are the customer demands today? Cutting quality is certainly key…

Giovanni Canova – Cutting quality is crucial, but we must contend with the difficulty of finding qualified operators, so ease of use of the machi­nes is a key factor. Sawing technologies are certainly not easy to use, because they require a fairly high level of expertise, but offering a user-friendly interface with automatic recognition systems for cutting choices allows the operator to work better, develop a passion for the machine, and counteract the discontinuity of the work process that is evident today.

Pietro Ferrari – We can say that a machine operator must have basic skills but not be a nuclear engineer, because the machine helps and protects them in the event of an error and in mana­ging a series of operations.

Giovanni Canova – The experience of the sawyer of old is no longer necessary; thanks to 3D scanning systems, we can read the log and pro­vide the operator with a clear and immediate visual representation. Cut­ting logic usually arises from the sawmill manager’s decisions, and therefore from the type of product demanded by the market. Our soft­ware allows direct communication between the office and the sawmill, as it functions like a Manufacturing Execution System (MES): internal orders are sent directly from the office to the operator’s screen, who can then enter them into the log optimization process. At the same time, sta­tistics and production trends can be monitored in real time from the of­fice. It’s not just about building a history, but about responding to a concrete need of modern companies, which are increasingly data-driven. Today, business is built on data.

We are committed to the automation and digitalization of the sawmill. The goal is to make the entire production cycle increasingly integrated, allowing the owner to have a complete, real-time view of what’s happe­ning in production directly from the office, with the support of an opti­mized number of operators. We have systems where a single operator controls the log band saw and the automatic trimming machine; in Val Pusteria, thanks to integration with Microtec, we have a system with a fully automatic cutting cycle. In France, too, our latest projects are giving us great satisfaction: the ability to provide efficient solutions with a re­duced number of operators represents a concrete value for our custo­mers.

Pietro Ferrari – However, we can say that as the workforce is reduced, so is the qualifications of the staff. You train them yourselves.

Giovanni Canova – The “assembly days” we offer our clients always include training programs: it’s no coincidence that our assemblers are often experts who have worked in sawmills.

Pietro Ferrari – So, on the one hand, extremely intelligent ma­chines and, on the other, personnel who are trained by you.

Pietro Ferrari – In Primultini’s more than a century of expe­rience, have you also seen the wood industry change?

Giovanni Canova – There’s an ever-increasing focus on optimization. The shortage of logs in Central Europe is dramatic, exacerbated in recent years by bark beetles, which have caused significant damage. This sce­nario has changed the way we think about machinery: until a few years ago, fixed clamps were still a common solution, but today, clamps must be independent to optimize log alignment and, consequently, maximize its utilization.

Spectacular glimpses of Primultini’s technologies.

When a wood cutting machine is used for prolonged periods of time, it is natural that the blade progressively loses its ability to cut, and for this reason it must undergo maintenance with the use of sharpeners.

In fact, the blade is no longer sharp after only a few hours of continuous use, and the risk, if it does not undergo maintenance, is that the cutting loses its effectiveness and even lead to the deformation of the blade.

Saw headrig is useful for cutting large logs thanks to the high speed rotation of the blade.

The rigidity of the blade and the overall stability allow the machine to cut the wood cleanly and precisely, with a high-performance end result.

Multiple ripsaws are particularly useful for cutting planks that have already been processed by a band saw. In fact, thanks to the multiple ripsaw the different thicknesses of planks are cut into smaller units that will then be put to different uses: beams for the roofs of houses and buildings; planks for parquet flooring; for the construction of building structures.

Primultini operates in the woodworking industry, manufacturing machinery for sawmills that work with all types of timber. In fact, timber is made up of different types of wood in terms of composition and geographic origin, and our consolidated knowledge of the different types allows us to build specific sawmill equipment to support customer needs in the best possible way.

The Company has over ninety years of experience and this guarantees our customers the reliability of a full service that is attentive to detail at all stages of the process. We both design and manufacture our sawmill equipment and these operations are carried out entirely within the company so as to guarantee the quality of our products.

Chipping canter is a machine that is coupled to a band saw during the primary breakdown of the logs. It is able to process both sides of the logs at the same time by eliminating the side slabs, with the chipping mechanism then transforming the slabs into chips.

The advantage is significant because thanks to the canter, two sides of the log can be simultaneously processed from the very first cut, thereby increasing productivity.

The technological application and advanced features render the Primultini automatic edger a unique and extremely innovative piece of machinery.

Thanks to a photocell system, the automatic edger permits you to scan the planks obtained from the previous process and to create a virtual profile of them in the form of a computer image. The customer can then electronically set, with extreme ease, the quantity and measurement of the elements they want to obtain with the trimming.

Resaws are machines equipped with rollers, used specifically for cutting semi-finished products and for feeding them lengthwise.

As a result, the resaw is a useful piece of equipment for cutting planks and boards, which are easily broken down into smaller units with variable thicknesses, depending on what they will be used for.

The precision and speed that characterize the Primultini resaw render it particularly versatile and it optimizes processing thanks to the fact that it makes maximum use of the wood.

Woodworking industry that Primultini operates in involves all the processing stages of timber, from the raw material to the manufacturing of the end product.

Primultini manufactures technologically advanced machinery for primary processing. Our machinery permits the raw material, generally the log, to be cut easily and efficiently in order to obtain semi-finished products, in particular boards and planks.