Located in Zaragoza (Spain), LECITRAILER S.A. is one of the largest European manufacturers of trailers and semi-trailers. The company's 260,000 square metre factory houses Europe's largest semi-trailer cataphoresis plant, developed and built by the joint effort of GEINSA, FUTURA Convogliatori Aerei, SILVI and COGEIM Europe.
The entrance to the new factory that houses Lecitrailer's impressive semitrailers and bodywork components cataphoresis line is located at the end of an area that connects the bodies production and welding department with the finishing one. To the left, there is a line built in 1996 by GEINSA, in which it is possible to manually apply both a coat of zinc-rich primer and finishing enamel on semi-trailers; it features a convection drying oven for both paint layers. To the right, there is the new shot blasting, cataphoresis, and liquid finishing line, processing all Lecitrailer's semi-trailers requiring only a cataphoresis treatment and all components that also require the application of a top coat (two-component high-solid enamel); this occurs in a new coating booth equipped with pneumatic personnel lifting platforms with x, y, and z-axis movement and a dedicated curing oven. This is the largest cataphoresis plant in Europe in terms of tank capacity. In future, it will also handle contracting coating operations, one of the objectives that the Spanish company aims at achieving with this investment.
The environment that houses the new cataphoresis and coating line is completely new, starting from its look: it is a 10,000 m2-wide modern, well-lit, and spacious factory, occupied only in part by the finishing plant despite its huge size – a capacity of 5,000 kg per load bar, a chain conveyor with from FUTURA's 7000 Series, ten 17 m long pre-treatment and cataphoresis tanks with a volume of 210 m3 each, ability to treat workpieces with a maximum size of 14 x 2.6 x 2.8 m, and maximum electrodeposition coating capacity equal to 150 m2 of surface.
As is often the case, Lecitrailer's plant is the result of the collaboration of various leading companies in their respective sectors. GEINSA (Bilbao, Basque Country) acted as the prime-contractor, designed the whole line, and supplied the pre-treatment system, the ovens, the cataphoresis plant, a pre-oven, the cross-linking oven, the finishing booth, and the top coat curing oven; GEINSA also equipped the entire pre-treatment and cataphoresis line with systems for water demineralisation and waste water purification and it developed the 4.0-oriented management software as well as all its integrations with the control software systems of individual machines.
SILVI (Lesmo, Italy) provided the cataphoresis tank and the ultrafiltration system. FUTURA Convogliatori Aerei (Robecco Pavese, Italy) was chosen by GEINSA as the technological partner for the part handling aspects, since it is one of the few European plant-engineering firms in this field currently capable of building a conveyor with such a large size and capacity. Finally, COGEIM (Casorezzo, Italy) supplied the shot blasting system: it was chosen directly by Lecitrailer by virtue of a long-term collaboration.
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