System brings a factory to Tecnargilla: Lamina

Sep 23, 2002

System brings a factory to Tecnargilla: Lamina23 September 2002 - For the first time in the history of Tecnargilla, and perhaps for the first time ever for a plant and machinery exhibition, a complete tile production plant will be in operation in the exhibition halls. This plant, called Lamina, will be installed and operated inside the stand of the Fiorano-based firm System, one of the world's leading suppliers of ceramic machinery. Lamina will take up half of the company's 2400-square-metre stand and will produce Sinterflex 1x3 metre tiles, innovative 3 mm thick flexible sheets developed through painstaking research carried out in System's laboratories over the past few years.
Visitors will be able to follow the production process step by step, from dry decoration using the Flexa unit to pressing with the Compatter system (which applies a pressure of 15,000 tons) and firing in the 60-metre-long kiln at 1,250°C. The finished product, called Sinterflex, has outstanding characteristics of light weight and strength and can be used for an enormous number of building and interior design applications. The finished product is withdrawn from the kiln just 20 minutes after the start of the cycle described above. This is a very evident innovation in terms of both product and process. All the machines are totally new and specially designed for this product. Furthermore, these ceramic sheets have extremely high resistance (as they use porcelain tile body), they are flexible (they do not break even when jumped on), bendable (allowing them to easily be used for cladding the concave walls of tunnels and underground stations) and they have exceptional dimensions as well as being very extremely thin (3 mm).
"We have great belief in Tecnargilla," Franco Stefani, System chairman told us, "and we wanted to contribute to making the event more spectacular and interesting for visitors. This plant and the product that it creates are our way of interpreting the exhibition's slogan, "The future of ceramics". For us it is a challenge to imagine ceramic in a different form from conventional tiles. An area of the stand will also be set up to display possible applications of Sinterflex in various fields of surface covering and interior design." In addition to the Lamina line, the System stand also includes other areas devoted to decoration products and end-of-line processes. lamina.jpg