Duravit makes new investments in high-pressure casting

Duravit, the world leader in high-quality designer sanitaryware, is headquartered in Hornberg in the heart of the Black Forest. Here, in the group’s main facility, the AVI Concept high-pressure casting system from Sacmi was successfully installed and started up last spring.

Launched onto the market two years ago, AVI Concept was chosen by the German group for its excellent productivity, and in particular the revolutionary fast mould changeover system. Compared to the several hours required with traditional systems, AVI slashes the time needed to change the mould and begin production of a different type of article to under an hour. Two other important factors were the low maintenance requirements and AVI’s compatibility with existing moulds designed for AVM and AVE units.

The new casting cell adopted by Duravit, which joins the two Sacmi AVM units and large set of moulds that the company has been using for a number of years, will be used to manufacture complex 7-part WCs with stick-on rims.

Within a few months of start-up, the customer confirmed that it was particularly pleased with two of the main advantages of AVI Concept. The first is a machine cycle of less than 20 minutes, which in practice means that with these two newly installed solutions Duravit is able to produce a new article every 10 minutes.

The second is the fast mould changeover system, which really comes into its own for the production of complex WCs as it completely eliminates long manual handling tasks that provide little added value and may take several hours in the case of products like these. With AVI Concept, all mould handling operations are performed by an anthropomorphic robot that can extract and handle all the mould parts directly from the machine.

With this order from one of the industry’s brand leaders in terms of manufacturing excellence, Sacmi has drawn from its more than 30 years of experience in the development of high pressure casting cells, a segment in which it leads the world. At the same time, this latest purchase reinforces the longstanding partnership between Sacmi Group and Duravit.

In addition to the casting systems adopted at the Hornberg plant and at the French production facility, Duravit also uses Sacmi technology for robotized glazing, the most recent system having been installed at the Duravit plant in China.