Roberto Calattini e Fabio Scardigli
For over thirty years, S.C. COSTRUZIONI MECCANICHE has been supporting the tanning industry: at the 2020 edition of Simac Tanning Tech, the spotlight was on the HAIRPRESS and CLEANDISC technologies.
“In the service of environment”. This is the main slogan, featured in the website’s homepage as well, chosen by S.C. COSTRUZIONI MECCANICHE, company based in Empoli (Florence province) that designs, manufactures and installs auxiliary systems and equipment for several industrial sectors, especially tanning machinery and depuration plants. Established in the mid ‘80s, the firm boasts thirty-five years of experience in the business and has focused its production policy on two precise goals that perfectly embody the priorities of the industrial world: environmental safeguard and occupational safety. The range of solutions developed by S.C. COSTRUZIONI MECCANICHE comprises, as far as the ecological field is concerned, equipment for wastewater filtering and screening, for by-products regeneration and for liming recycling.
HAIRPRESS
The Tuscan enterprise exhibited its technologies at the latest edition of Simac Tanning Tech, held in Milan in February, where we met the two business partners, Roberto Calattini and Fabio Scardigli.
“Our eco-friendly filters,” pointed out Calattini and Scardigli, “are suitable for several industrial sectors, this gives us the chance to work efficiently in Italy as well as abroad, the latter playing a key role for us given that, in 2019, exports accounted for 70% of the revenues. With regard to the ecological field, we provide complete plants for wastewater pre-treatment or treatment. As for the safety branch, our firm manufactures chemical-hazard protection systems to be used in the tanning industry and in other sectors as well.”
How does this range of solutions fall into step with your corporate history and technological level?
The technologies we produce guarantee top-notch quality standards thanks to the expertise of the in-house technical office and to a well-equipped mechanical workshop. In this way, we have managed to achieve first-rate results when it comes to reliability and durability as well as maintenance-wise, thus effectively meeting the demands of renowned domestic and foreign groups, the majority of which has been working with us for quite some time: a bond usually grounded in mutual trust, that has helped us not only fulfil their requests, but also acquire, over the years, strategic experience and skills to successfully operate in the tanning sector.
At Tanning Tech, the spotlight is on two machines, HAIRPRESS and CLEANDISC, two examples of manufacturing excellence in terms of environmental sustainability. Can you tell us something more about the first one?
HAIRPRESS, part of the SMART TECHNOLOGY range together with other models, is a compacting filter designed for hair recovery. It is a self-cleaning machine, purposefully conceived for hair recovery in liming, and it can be also used to filter other types of either tanning wastewater or industrial processes effluents. The filter’s main feature lies in its ability to dry out and compact the retained material thanks to a system featuring a rubber cone with a peculiar shape, patented by the company, resulting in a volume reduction as well as in a decrease in waste disposal costs.
What are HAIRPRESS’ distinctive traits?
It is provided with a filtering pipe with a semi-circular section, manufactured with a thick, perforated stainless-steel plate and with a screw that scrapes the pipe’s inner surface. The material retained by the filtering panel is removed by the screw and pushed through the rubber cone, where, thanks to the pressure developed, loses most of the water it previously contained. Special brushes, placed on the outer side, clean thoroughly the filtering holes, thus preventing them from clogging. Therefore, the filtering flow rate is always high and the filtering system requires little maintenance. The electric and control panels are positioned on the machine’s edge.
CLEANDISC
Let’s now move on to CLEANDISC.
It is a wastewater micro-filtering system, belonging to the WATER TECHNLOGY range together with Belt Filter (self-cleaning belt screen) and Dried (device for compacting screened solid elements). Featuring inlets smaller than 1 mm, these microfilters are the upgraded version of traditional screening and allow to enhance the efficiency rate when it comes to the removal of suspended materials before the subsequent treatment phases, whether the factory relies on its own discharge plant or uses into centralized one. CLEANDISC microfilters, patented as well, represent the evolution of a widely tested machine, that is, the rotating disk filter, suitably modified in order to facilitate the maintenance of the filtering nets.
How do CLEANDISC microfilters work? And what kind of benefits do they entail?
In a tank divided into three sections – feeding, clarified discharge and excess liquid -, wastewater is pumped to the feeding segment, flows through the space between the couples of rotating disks covered with filtering nets. Water filters through the net and moves to the discharge section, while solid particles are retained inside the disks. As their quantity increases, they form compact masses that scrape the filtering nets’ inner surface, keeping them clean. When the retained solid components exceed a certain volume, the machine begins to discharge them automatically. The filtering nets are cleaned periodically by means of a backwashing nozzles system at the end of the processing cycle. Even though it is a cutting-edge innovation, said technology is simple and effective: the central axle has been eliminated and the disks mounted on guide rolls. The rotating movement is transmitted to each disk via a pinion placed on the gearmotor’s axle, connected with the outer edge of the disk. In this way, disks can be easily removed from their slots without using any tool, and they can be either thoroughly cleaned in a few minutes, even with high-pressure water, or, if there are spare disks available, can be replaced with clean ones. www.sctech.it