Insight

A commitment to quality, modularity, excellence, reliability, customer centricity, continuous improvement, innovation, team working, and employee engagement, are the core values that have been defining SACMA Group since 1939 – making it the world leading manufacturer of multi-station cold forming machines for high-precision metal components and fasteners.

At its headquarters in Limbiate, north of Milan, Italy, the 60,000m² plant is the beating heart of SACMA Group. Here, through an insourced, fully vertically integrated and modular production system, the company machines mechanical parts with the highest standards for precision and raw material quality. Each workpiece is then assembled in-house and becomes part of either a SACMA multi-station cold forming machine or an Ingramatic flat die thread roller.

“These machines then share the same destiny – accompanying customers for the next half century in their workshops, rewarding
them with the highest output possible – three shifts per day,” states SACMA Group.

In the last 15 years, SACMA has also been dedicating its efforts in extending its product portfolio through strategic acquisitions and product innovation. The result is what SACMA Group is today – an industrial ecosystem for the fastener and cold forming industry that is able to offer cutting edge technologies from process design through to 3D simulation, such as multi-station cold forming equipment (SACMA),
flat die thread rollers (Ingramatic) all the way to dedicated CNC machines for secondary operations after forming and threading (HS ASPE). In addition, anything that goes in between these steps requires stable, high efficiency loading and moving systems and for this SACMA Group supplies reliable solutions through Tecno Lift.

“Our business model is focusing on proposing everything possible to support our customers to manufacture fasteners at the lowest cost possible, with the best quality, thanks to our machineries and ancillaries,” underlines SACMA Group. “Our target is to provide premium machineries to manufacture parts and help the new generation of technicians to work safely, whilst respecting conditions regarding sustainable, which are today’s mandatory key factors. We also invest more than 10% of our sales turnover every year in machineries and buildings to further improve our productivity and to be more efficient.”

SACMA Group adds: “Each entity of the group also has its own R&D, manufacturing department and assembly lines. We strongly believe that it is better to grow in supplying more kinds of machineries, with different entities such as our four brands, than to make more machinery. By proceeding like that we have perfect control of the quality of our products to please the worldwide market.”

Satisfying market needs

SACMA Group is focused on different key markets everywhere in the world and will be busy supplying machines to the worldwide fastener market for both 2024 and 2025. “This is mainly due to the reshoring strategy companies are operating since the Covid-19 period, as well as the increasing demand for machines to supply more fasteners to the automotive market – supported by the EV sector’s growing production,” reports SACMA Group. “We have also seen a lower demand for machines from the construction market, due to the decrease in this sector – impacted by the higher interest rates. However, heavy construction is still demanding bigger sized machines for structural bolt production in order to support the large-scale public works confirmed by different countries around the world.”

The aerospace market has also demonstrated a dynamic trend allowing SACMA Group to supply more Ingramatic and SACMA warm forming machines, and also HS ASPE drilling/tapping machines, to run parts with special materials such as titanium, waspaloy, A286 and inconel. The electrics and general industry fields have also been very active with a lot of requests for smaller machine sizes.

“End users have a high appreciation of SACMA machines, considering them to be well designed, well manufactured, powerful, adaptable for making special parts, flexible for making long or short parts, as well as being fast and reliable whilst providing low cost production,” underlines SACMA Group. “Our modular system is the best warranty for customers to standardise their process, tooling design and friendly user experience. We have more than 20 million spare parts in stock – making our Group the most trustworthy supplier of machineries. This last advantage allows our customers to have our machine always in condition to manufacture parts without any interruption.”

Another aspect that has enabled SACMA to stand out within the market is the tendency of customers to invest in combined machines that have multi-operation all in one machine. “This provides the best solution for high productivity requirements, consolidation of production methods, floor space usage and workflow in a fastener manufacturing environment. It also makes the production of our customers much more sustainable, which is today a strategical necessity,” underlines SACMA Group. “We are a unique manufacturer able to provide all these solutions, SACMA can provide combined headers with heading, pointing and threading stations; Ingramatic provides the combined threaders with washer assembly, rotative threading and flat dies threading stations; and HS ASPE provides combined secondary operation machines with drilling, chamfering and tapping stations ‘all in One’.”

Ongoing investment

In total, SACMA Group boasts more than 80 machine models including presses, rolling machines, chamfering machines, tapping machines, drilling machines, lathes, transfer and multi-spindle machines, as well as workpiece handling systems – with a worldwide installed base of around 10,000 machines. “For this reason, we are finalising the construction of a building at our headquarters in Limbiate, Italy, that will be dedicated to the service and assistance activities in order to perform additional support to customers,” highlights SACMA Group. “In addition, we have just finalised the new extension at Tecno Lift to increase its capacity – as the company has been increasing its sales turnover by 15% – 20% every year.”

Other investments within the group include the SACMA Vimercate division completing the installation of an FMS line with four horizontal CNC machines – completely equipped with fully automatic loading systems to run parts 24 hours. “This line includes the most advanced features to run our components with a higher quality in a shorter time – helping us to significantly increase productivity,” points out SACMA Group. “In order to facilitate the management of the supply chain, we have also made large investments into vertical storage system in all of our factories – to have a better control of our stock and suppliers.”

With technology continuously advancing at an unprecedented rate, SACMA Group believes it is crucial that it stays at the forefront of the sector when it comes to implementing new solutions. “As a business we cannot allow ourselves to fall behind, which is why our skilled R&D engineers are committed to hunting down the industry’s most valuable technological innovations,” mentions SACMA Group. “However, it’s not just about discovering them. It’s also about envisioning how they can be integrated into our production processes, machinery, and activities as a whole, as we strive for continuous improvement.”

After selecting and designing an innovative solution, SACMA Group also has a laboratory that is dedicated to testing a solution for at least two years. “This is the only way to guarantee perfect functioning before looking to apply the solution to our machines and according to our serial production strategy,” explains SACMA Group. “We also have an innovative service to develop new activities or new products through our S-Tooling department, which is where we co-engineer with our customers from the drawing of the part to the industrialised project.”

Leading the sector

In addition to staying at the forefront of innovation, SACMA Group also looks to stay ahead when it comes to some of the key topics impacting global markets, for instance sustainability. “For sure sustainability is a topic that we are focusing on and we will need to continue to work on it going forward,” reports SACMA Group. “We believe that we are only at the beginning of what will be a long process when it comes to sustainability. This is because many machines will need to be replaced by new ones that consume less and can make netshape parts in one step – such as with our combined headers, combined threaders and combined machining machines. This series of machinery is also developed with mechatronic solutions to make them energy efficient.”

Internally SACMA Group has also taken steps and made investments when it comes to sustainability. “We have already invested in photovoltaic solar panels and this year all of our companies will be self-sufficient using green energy for the heating, air conditioning and electricity for all of our offices,” mentions SACMA Group. “We will also publish our first sustainability report by June 2024. We believe sustainability is a crucial topic and we want to have the best conditions to be the most sustainable manufacturer of machineries – having a perfect vertical integration of our process, made 100% internally in our factories, as well as using only raw material sourced in Italy.”

Another area in which SACMA Group has taken significant steps is in regard to Industry 4.0 and digitisation, with the Group already offering different options to customers. “We have created new options for all of our machines to integrate with Industry 4.0, which can be customised based on the customer’s level of digitalisation,” highlights SACMA Group. “From a ‘simple’ option to the ‘full advanced’ option, customers can access a range of data, such as machine alarm statistics, energy consumption in kWh, as well as compressed air consumption in cubic metres, for each order. We also have the SACMA 4.0 web App, which can be viewed on a PC. In addition to the information described above, customers can access the electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic diagrams, which can also be consulted from a tablet or smartphone via QR code on the machine.”

To add to Industry 4.0, and digitisation, SACMA Group is also working on how automation can help provide benefits to both the Group and its customers. “Automation has an important role in helping the technicians to work on the forming machines in order to facilitate their work and we believe automation is an opportunity to make the machines user-friendly,” explains SACMA Group. “That is why we have developed a new HMI program to manage the automation of the machine set-up. From the touchscreen panel, according to the machine model, it is now possible to set-up the entire machine. For example, for bigger SACMA formers, the S-Transfer is available to have the machine fully automatic. Speaking about secondary operation machines, HS ASPE can implement robots to load and unload tools and/or parts. Tecno Lift can also supply automatic devices to create fully integrated cells with more machines connected with loaders and conveyors.”

SACMA Group concludes: “It is clear that the fastener industry is looking to simplify processes with new machines that can help to reduce the overall number involved in making more parts, whilst also requiring less operators and using more automation to help improve the flow of the parts, with attention also given to sustainability. At SACMA Group we are able to provide a full service to integrate more machines, with different technologies, in order to make a fully integrated cell that truly meets and exceeds the needs of every customer.”