The aim of the work carried out in the first period was to complete the design of the entire EffiCOIL machine. Once the design has been completed, the mechanical parts to be constructed have been developed, choosing for each of them the most suitable material most compliant with the functions to be performed, the required heat treatments and the suitable surface finishes. Once the mechanical parts were built and completed with all the finishing processes, we started the assembly activities of the units and the systems that form the EffiCOIL machine. When we completed the assembly of the prototype machines and put in line with each other to form the EffiCOIL machine, the first commissioning activities began with the upload of the axis parameters on the drives that operate the motors, to check the conformity of the movements, the speeds, the accelerations of each operational axis. In parallel, we have planned and developed different activities to promote and disseminate the EffiCOIL project.
The work developed in the second period consisted in verifying the functioning of the first EffiCOIL prototype. With the functional tests all the interventions for modifying and improving the points identified as not fully compliant with the data set in the project and not fully satisfactory in terms of functional results, have been implemented. Strong commitment was dedicated to the development of software programs to be installed on EffiCOIL. The machine is equipped with operating units making a considerable range of sheet metal processes by using various mechanical tools for shearing / punching and forming, and together with this, it can simultaneously cut any shapes with high speed and quality leveraging the optic fibre laser: there capabilities require a complex and complete software system knowing how to well use all the available operational functions, in order to obtain the best production results. The work for optimizing EffiCOIL prototype allowed us to present a perfectly operating system, able to show the production of finished metal workparts with complex processes, with fully automatic cycles and all the advantages deriving from sheet feeding directly with coil. The live show of these EffiCOIL advantages to customers, salesmen, agents and new contacts, had extraordinary effectiveness, considering that a completely new product is proposed; since it is unique on the market, it had to be discovered and verified. The end markets include metal parts producers with long experience in their sector, who are therefore deeply competent and not only wish to listen to the description of EffiCOIL benefits and advantages, but also wish to make production tests on the workparts interesting for them. The results - although still at an early stage – have already been obtained through numerous offer inquiries for supplying EffiCOIL systems. Several negotiations are well on track to transform the offers into purchase orders, both on markets where Produtech is already present (U.S.A. Germany, Poland, Italy) and on new markets, where EffiCOIL proposal facilitated the identification of new sellers and – together with them – contacts with potential new customers (France, Denmark, Brazil).
