Tube mills 4.0 – BM Automation and Polytec provide advanced automation systems and robotic cells for Tube&Pipe

Just over twenty years of life, a consolidated turnover of 42 million euro, more than a hundred direct employees and representative offices around the world, summed up the identity of BM GROUP, the italian industrial group founded in 1993 by Mirko Bottini. Born as a company dealing industrial plant engineering and renewable energy, the called BM ELETTRONICA has grown rapidly by acquiring know-how in important steel mills, with the supply of advanced automation systems, able to let the production lines faster and flexible, to reduce costs and to improve the products quality, anticipating the 4.0 industry concept.

In the last seven years BM Group decided to invest heavily on R&D projects that solved problems related to the production departments at high risk of danger and that would make more flexible, faster and ameliorate their performances, creating new systems and new technologically advanced machines that would respond to the new needs of the industry. Involving renowned research centers, universities and professionals within the group, in a few years this activity has been successful, with the acknowledgment of the global market.  BM Group, through its companies, supplies "Industry 4.0", joining the "know-how in production "with" systems integration "and" machine intelligence "in view of "energy conservation".

The division BM AUTOMATION leads process automation implemented with the so-called "machine intelligence" as well as electrical equipment and software for a complete service of tube mills revamping; next to the modernization of production lines, it offers the “global tracking” package, the tracking system that follows the product from the entrance in the plant, along the production process, storage warehouse, to truck loading output to evacuation from the warehouse and cargo trucks and that registers all the data and then the whole story of each product.
Thanks to its recognized know how as supplier of automation systems for the metals market, BM invested a lot in the sister company Polytec,  specialized in the production of standardized robotic cells for steel. Polytec sees an inseparable alliance between human intelligence and the power of robotics in the future of human development and for the achievement of new and innovative ambitions. The Polytec range integrates the complete steel production process with specific solutions for TUBE&PIPE.

These machines are capable of handling speed, trajectory, collision detection, exchange tool fast and automated ability to switch from the measurement functions in vision functions artificial to automatic loading of cartridges of measurement without operator, separation and transportation of specimens to the laboratory autonomous to obtain a process completely devoid of personal risk areas confining operators into the control panels. For example, in the context of traceability, artificial vision, laser marking and robots are combined in a cell able to identify location, number and distance of each product to be labeled, directly output to continuous casting, applying the TAGs with logos, and data matrix codes (typically heat number, casting line and progressive). Redundancy of the nails, tags, the leak test and final inspection by artificial vision with re-Auto Labeling in case of illegibility guarantee percentages close to 100% of the product traceable, its life cycle from raw material to end products.
Among the specific cells for tube mills, there are: PolyTAG T, the robotic cell for labeling tube bundles; PolyMAN , the robot for automatic pre-screwing of couplings and PolyPRO, the one for automatic application of screw-on pipe protectors;  PolyCAP, that automatically manages the tube cap application.
Each cell is pre-tested in Polytec to reduce the commissioning time. For factories that do not intend to proceed with a complete production lines revamping, Polytec offers a range of solutions that are easily integrated in existing plants for an investment low cost / high value.