The Oldrati group based in Villongo (Italy), founded by Vanni Oldrati in 1964, is engaged in manufacturing products made of rubber, silicone and thermoplastic resins. The range also includes multi-component products, such as composite parts consisting of metal and rubber, thermoplastic resins combined with silicone or components made of metal, plastic and rubber, and many others. The Oldrati group, which currently employs more than 1,300 associates and realized 119 million euro in sales in 2015, supplies its products to many different branches of industry, such as the automobile industry, the household appliances industry, the oil and gas sector and the heating industry.

To manufacture its products, the Oldrati group uses a total of more than 400 injection moulding machines with clamping forces ranging from 500 to 40,000 kN. In buying new machines, Oldrati’s main considerations are energy efficiency and a good price/performance ratio, as well as good service. In the previous year, Wittmann Battenfeld Italia was able to establish its first business relationship with Oldrati with the delivery of Wittmann robots. The company’s interest in machines from the Wittmann group was sparked off at the Fakuma 2014. There, Oldrati associates saw the servo hydraulic SmartPower adapted for LSR processing and were impressed by its machine technology. Wittmann Battenfeld subsequently provided a machine to Oldrati for test purposes.

In addition to this SmartPower 120/525, Oldrati and Silital (part of the group since 2007) have now acquired more machines of the same model as well as a machine from the all-electric EcoPower series, an EcoPower 110/350, and machines from the hydraulic HM series with 1,800 kN clamping force and equipped with energy-saving servo motors. Oldrati has also installed an Airmould system to use the Wittmann Battenfeld injection moulding process with internal gas pressure.

The machines from the SmartPower series, which make up the majority of the machines purchased by Oldrati and Silital, stand out by their high degree of energy efficiency, precision, user-friendliness and compact design, combined with generous mould fixing dimensions, high speed and cleanness. They come with a highly efficient servo hydraulic drive as standard, and use, the released deceleration energy via the KERS system similar to that of the EcoPower for barrel heating, which provides optimal energy efficiency.

Eight of the machines supplied to the Oldrati group are adapted for liquid silicone processing, which means that they are equipped with cooled barrels and a cooling plate mounted on the moving platen, as well as a dosing pump. What is more, the SmartPower already offers excellent attributes for liquid silicone processing in its standard version, due to its extremely clean and generously dimensioned mould fixing area.