A company founded in Milan in 1910, CICRESPI designs and implements solutions and services for automatic identification, traceability and security of products, packaging and documents. Automatic identification is realized with barcodes, tags, RFID systems, in-line and off-line printers, automated labeling. Traceability is realized with sensors and readers, wired/wireless communication infrastructure, data flow controls with PLC/PC and dedicated software.
Production and supply chain safety, to protect consumer health, is realized with in-line quality control solutions to check for foreign bodies, ascertain conformity of weight and level of what is packaged, airtightness of packages, authenticity of products.
Through the most advanced ITS (Identification, Traceability, Security) technologies, CICRESPI guarantees each product a safe path from producer to consumer and vice versa. These are complex technologies that require a multidisciplinary and systematic approach, which the company develops within CICRESPI Engineering, the corporate division entirely dedicated to the research, design, development and production of global ITS solutions. It is precisely with the CICRESPI Engineering division that Ever Elettronica, a leading company in the industrial automation sector, has been collaborating for years now.
In this regard, we interviewed Gianfranco Rosa, CICRESPI Engineering design manager, who gave us a field account of how the partnership between the two industrial entities comes to fruition.
What is the mission of CICRESPI Engineering?
"The machines we design and build are used in ITS in all industries, with an immense variety of application types. In fact, our systems can handle items of all types and sizes, from the small pharmaceutical vial to the pallet. CICRESPI Engineering modifies production lines, conveyors and intelligent manipulators, identifies, tracks and assembles parts, programs PLCs and writes dedicated software, automates marking, proposes labeling solutions and devices for in-line quality control. Our specialization is the very high degree of customization of the machines we produce. Each of our machines is in fact a unique piece, which is designed with a specific purpose and for a specific product. For us, in fact, it is very important to exchange information with the customer, who transmits to us the inputs and requirements related to a specific product, thanks to which we design and develop the system that performs best and meets the initial needs."
How did your collaboration with Ever Elettronica come about?
"The automation of our labeling machines takes benefit of the advanced functionality of drives and the high torque of stepper motors from Ever Elettronica. In the past we used drives with only step and direction functionality, managed by external control boards. With Ever Elettronica's systems, the motor driver is provided with operating logic that can be easily extended to direct control of machine objects external to the drive, such as photocells and various accessories, and then to the entire labeling machine, which is also characterized by high motion accuracy of the label positioning motor. The advantage of this is that thanks to Ever Elettronica's components we have a single electronic control and power unit that allows us to operate the single labeling head. In this way, the performance that is achieved is greatly improved; in fact, we now have a single item with excellent performance speed and much more precise motion control. For several years now, all our labeling machines have been equipped with drives from Ever Elettronica."
How come you switched to this type of drive?
"It was an obligatory path, as over time customer demands became more and more elaborate, consequently the operation of the labeling machine became more and more complicated, for example, with tighter and tighter tolerances on the speed tracking accuracy of products. This gave rise to the need for electronics with a substantial amount of 'intelligence'. In my opinion, Ever Elettronica's proposal was perfect for this purpose, and with its full digital products, in which all drive control is done digitally and both the parameters of the motor itself and the external signals are controlled by the same DSPC-type microprocessor, I could actually verify this in practice."
How has your technology improved?
"Thanks to Ever Elettronica's drive, we are able to specialize our machines even more and faster. And since we mainly work on special, highly customized machines, having this kind of flexibility on board the drive allows us to more quickly and effectively achieve the result we want to achieve from time to time."
How do you rate the collaboration developed with Ever Elettronica over the years?
"One of the reasons we opted for their products is also the good level of cooperation we have established with the Lodi-based company's technical staff. Their ability to interpret our requests has enabled us to be better performers to our customers. In addition, Ever's product has proven to be very reliable, high-performing and high-tech over time. Ever Elettronica's drives have lent themselves very well to all kinds of our customization, and for us this represents a fundamental aspect of their use."