A company was established in the Modena area, committed to providing process and product solutions to companies. A research centre established in 2017 by the Vicenza-based company Ecor International. Today 75 people work here with a turnover of 9 million euros. An international and transversal research, focused on winning alliances. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Fabrizio Casadei, CEO of Il Sentiero International Campus for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
What if? Two simple words and a question mark that open up a thousand possible scenarios for those who dream big. And then with determination, perseverance and passion they can actually make those dreams come true. What if? It seems simple, yet it is so difficult. But there are stories that start precisely from the possibility of succeeding. And that really make it. What we are about to tell is the story of a company that has decided to focus on research, innovation, and the skills of the people who bring it to life. But to properly explain the origin of Il Sentiero International Campus we need to take a step back. This research centre was established in 2017 by the Vicenza-based company Ecor International. For this company, everything began in 1976 with the opening of a warehouse for the trade of stainless steel. In almost fifty years of activity, the idea became a consolidated company, a true point of reference for the production of components with high functional criticality in steel, aluminium, titanium and special alloys. The brilliant intuition was that of Sergio Lucietto. For him, everything started from that healthy obsession in investing in technology and research. This path led the company specialised in welding to combine manufacturing with the technical and scientific skills of engineers specialised in reliability engineering, surface engineering, design and prototyping, 3D printing, splicing technologies and chemical, physical and mechanical analysis of materials. A team work that will prove successful.
Company profile. Il Sentiero International Campus offers solutions and services in splicing technologies, design and rapid prototyping, reliability engineering, surface engineering and additive manufacturing. It has the most advanced technologies and tools at its disposal. They range from microscopes to 3D printers, from scratch testers to the tribocorrosimetre, a tool that synergistically measures the degree of corrosion and wear of a component. It seems like science fiction, but it is rather research. And it is the future. This centre had 39 employees in 2018 and today they have almost doubled: 75 people work here with a turnover that has gone from 3.6 million to 9 million euros. The Italian industrial research centre is based in Schio, Lamezia Terme and Magreta, which is a hamlet of less than five thousand souls in the Modena municipality of Formigine. A small but very ambitious town: it is part of the Modena Ceramic District and is in the production area of the Modena balsamic vinegar and of the Parmigiano Reggiano PDO. But a lot of industrial research is also done here. The specialisations present at this location concern metallurgy, surface engineering and additive manufacturing of 3D printing. «We have advanced production technologies, to obtain a rapid scaling up of the prototype solutions developed in-house, we have equipped ourselves with industrial-sized plants also dedicated to research and all falling within the world of Industry 4.0.» This is what Fabrizio Casadei, CEO of Il Sentiero International Campus and General Manager of Ecor, says. This 54-year-old Roman manager, a mechanical engineer with a degree from La Sapienza University in Rome and a PhD in surface engineering awarded in the UK, worked for fifteen years in an industrial research centre owned by several multinationals. «The land of Emilia has always fascinated me. And then Ecor's main customers have always been from Emilia, even if we are from Veneto. Here we have always seen a great desire to succeed and an extraordinary open-mindedness», says Casadei. Among the coating systems there is PVD/PECVD, which allows the depositing of thin metal and ceramic films with a thickness from hundreds of nanometres to tens of microns. But here there is also a unique plant in Europe and additive manufacturing facilities, therefore linked to 3D printing for metal powders, polymers and composite materials.
Teamwork. What distinguishes this excellence in research is teamwork. Because here we deal with the drafting and management of R&D projects: from the functional scheme to the industrialisation of process and product systems. Here we conduct studies, prototyping, design and production of special plants and equipment, with particular reference to process subsystems in the field of automatic processing and packaging machines. The new headquarters of the advanced industrial research centre is located in Castelvetro, on the Modena hillsides, in an area of thirty-seven thousand square metres. Castelvetro will over time host over fifty professionals including engineers, physicists and chemists who will be able to dedicate themselves to the research and development of innovative solutions, also creating new job opportunities for many researchers. The activities concern the study and development of new materials and of high-efficiency, low-cost mechanical systems. The future is a beautiful page to write together.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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