Madeleine Prior is the English Content Specialist for 3Dnatives, the leading international online magazine on 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. As part of the team, Madeleine is in charge of defining the content 3Dnatives covers for its english-speaking audience, bringing the latest news about the additive manufacturing sector and its implications to readers.

These are just a few of the many examples that show how the fruitful collaboration between two sector leaders contributes to their mutual success, fostering the development of a company that, in over 120 years of history, has never stopped facing new challenges for the benefit of its customers.

For many years, designers at Campetella Robotic Center have been using NSK's solutions for the realisation of Cartesian robots and many other handling systems. In particular, the company uses the latest generation of linear guides and roller bearings, chosen for their performance characteristics and absolute reliability.

Campetella Robotic Center is an Italian company specialising in the production and application of industrial robots and automation systems for plastic injection moulding. Its history goes back centuries – the business was founded back in 1897 as a manufacturer of special agricultural equipment and, over the years, has accompanied hundreds of entrepreneurs along the path where craftsmanship turns into industry. While maintaining strong roots in the Marche region, five successive generations of the Campetella family have been able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by globalisation, today serving multinational customers on all continents.

NSK linear guides and rolling bearings find use in many advanced automation systems for plastic injection moulding processes, including the industrial robots manufactured by Campetella Robotic Center.

Another feature highly appreciated by Campetella Robotic Center is the unique Gothic arch profile of NSK’s NH/NS guides, which guarantees perfect straightness in long junction rails. The Gothic arch profile with four-point ‘X’ contact guarantees rigidity without losing the ability to compensate for small alignment errors. In addition, the four deep-groove rails are equipped with oversized balls to ensure maximum load capacity.

In the spirit of close co-operation between the companies, NSK has begun collaborating with the Campetella Academy by presenting its most advanced linear motion solutions to help develop next-generation products and solutions.

The issue of skills is very important to Campetella Robotic Center, so much so that it recently launched the strategic Campetella Academy project.

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"The market is asking for increasingly advanced and complex solutions,” Campetella added. “For a company like ours, it’s essential to keep pace with the latest technologies. At the same time, it’s vital that we transfer the knowledge we’ve accumulated to our customers, to help them achieve their business objectives. The Campetella Academy provides a meeting point for us, our strategic suppliers and our customers. It promotes the dissemination of automation knowledge in the production environment, to the benefit of all, so that everyone can strengthen their role in an increasingly competitive and challenging global market."

Injection molding is a manufacturing process that allows for the design of large volumes of parts. The majority of plastic components that exist today are made using this technique. However, the production of a mold – most often metal – is expensive and time-consuming. This is where 3D printing comes in: instead of designing a metal mold, it can be printed in 3D, either via FDM, laser sintering or stereolithography. The costs are reduced as well as the delays, additionally using 3D printing it could be possible to create a more complex mold with for example internal cooling channels.

Luca Marinangeli, Purchasing Manager of Campetella Robotic Center, said: "Thanks to years of successful collaboration and mutual trust, our designers have become autonomous in the selection of components, but they often converse with NSK technicians to investigate new solutions or identify new opportunities offered by the latest technological solutions. A good example is the K1 self-lubrication system, which has been tried and tested since its introduction to the market and has become standard in all Campetella-manufactured machines wherever major linear movements are required. The K1 system allows us to guarantee maintenance-free solutions for our customers, which is a great and appreciated added value in plants that must work 24/7, year-round. It’s not uncommon for our machines to use roller bearings that must work for millions of cycles at high speeds and with very heavy loads. Since using NSK's K1 self-lubrication unit, the roller bearing block and linear guide have an operating life that exceeds that of other machine components, such as electrical cables, and never requires maintenance."

3Dnatives is the largest international online media platform on 3D printing and its applications. With its in-depth analysis of the market, 3Dnatives gets over 1 million unique visitors per month and is currently available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian. 3Dnatives works with key Additive Manufacturing market players and offers a variety of services such as a 3D printing price comparison engine, B2B consulting and B2B brand content, event management and much more!

We are excited to welcome Formlabs, a leading company offering professional 3D printers of choice for engineers, designers, manufacturers and decision makers around the world. The Massachusetts-based manufacturer has developed a wide range of SLA machines as well as an SLS solution, the Fuse 1. It also offers its own suite of high-performance materials and software. Watch the replay below!

CEO Elia Campetella said: "Our customers ask us to help them build high-productivity lines, where every element of the automation chain offers maximum optimisation, not just to guarantee high speed, but to ensure that it never breaks down or stops unexpectedly. This means that the starting point for our designers is the highest quality components and sub-systems, without which we, in turn, could not guarantee the highest quality and lowest total cost of ownership for our customers. For this reason, we ask our strategic suppliers, which include NSK, to adopt the same philosophy: quality and reliability must always be market- leading. This is the only way we can enhance the creativity of our designers who devise the many automation solutions for workpiece handling that we offer.”

On September 23rd at 4PM CEST (10AM EDT), join Formlabs Applications Engineer, Juliette Combe and 3Dnatives as we discuss how 3D printing enables in-demand mold fabrication to generate hundreds of parts, from idea to production, in a matter of days. The webinar will cover topics related to plastic injection molding and additive manufacturing. Including, but not limited to, what materials are compatible, what is the life span of a 3D printed mold, what is the cost difference between a metal mold and a printed mold, etc. These will then be illustrated through concrete application cases, while also showing the different steps involved in creating a 3D printed mold. It will be the perfect opportunity to get started with 3D printing of plastic molds for short-run production and thus accelerate your product development, boost your innovation and reduce your costs.

Presently, Campetella Robotic Center is a leading company focused on mechanical designs and concepts, while also providing software engineering, plant installation, and industrial robot sales and aftersales assistance. Robotic solutions for the plastic moulding sector still represent core business. This solid experience has led to the company’s selection by major national and international industrial groups with multiple production needs: from unloading the part from the extruder to final packaging of the product ready for shipment to the consumer.

Juliette Combe is an application engineer at Formlabs, conducting research on 3D printing workflows for engineering and manufacturing. Her scope of work includes collaborations with customers, in-house testing, and knowledge transfer through the creation of technical content and training. Previously, she worked in the Open Innovation group at GE Power. She has a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich and carried out research on nano-3D printing at UC Berkeley.

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The experience gained in the industrial automation world has made the company’s robots a landmark in Industry 4.0 applications relating to plastic materials. This leading position is also thanks to consolidated partnerships with the world’s principal manufacturers of injection moulding machines. For each application in the plastics sector, Campetella studies and proposes the most suitable technological solution for handling and moving parts. From labelling to assembly, from quality control to palletising, the company’s design team is able to provide and implement the most suitable automatic systems that guarantee series production 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Since the 1980s, Campetella has developed an innovative series of Cartesian robots and manipulators that have achieved extraordinary market success, particularly in the plastic moulding sector, thanks to their high performance and reliability.

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