Fonderia Casati is Industry 4.0 also thanks to MITA Cooling Systems

1. The Company: the vision of a "foundry 4.0"

Cooling technologies to support not just a process, but a future business vision. Fonderia Casati, a historic company in Varese, is clear about what maintaining its competitiveness at the European level will depend on: the automation of its industrial processes, thanks to an integrated data flow between the production line and management control.

MITA Cooling Technologies has therefore provided its customer with an evaporative cooling tower and a central unit for cooling management and monitoring: the data collected by the system will in fact be sent to the internal management system and will contribute to the optimization of production processes.

“There is no brand, in Europe, that does not mount on its engines a part that comes out of Viale Belforte,” explains a video made by the Industrial Union of Varese. Which also tells of Fonderia Casati’s attitude toward a business philosophy as Industry 4.0.

Since 1972, the company has been producing castings in special cast irons and stainless steels: turbo-compressors, turbo-collectors, exhaust manifolds. The main customers are European players in the automotive sector, but the shipbuilding sector and other general mechanical industries are also served by the Varese brand.

In the past few years, the industrial automation discourse has also been developed: Fonderia Casati manufactures objects in an almost totally automated way, making use of a unified data flow from the plant to the company’s management system. What also makes it possible to cut water and energy use while respecting the environment.

2. The requirements: cooling and control of process water.

Fonderia Casati has installed a new induction furnace at its historic site in Viale Belforte in Varese, Italy: again MITA Cooling Technologies, which had already supplied the plant with a PME-E type evaporative tower, was called in as a consultant for the cooling process.

The requirements of the new system (about 400 kW, thermal jump 10°) were reduced compared to the previous MITA realization. However, on this new occasion it was necessary to integrate the cooling system with the automation of the industrial process developed in recent years by the Varese-based company.

Of course, it was immediately thought to take advantage of the hyper-amortization, provided by the Ministry of Economic Development, for the acquisition of goods and technologies that enable the transformation to 4.0.

3. The solution: PMS cooling tower and cooling station4.0

A PMS-type open-circuit tower, consisting of a single block of non-corrodible fiberglass and suitable for small plants, was selected for the Varese-based company.

Small in size, large in opportunities for use: especially when integrated via hydraulic connections and sensors to a central unit for automatic cooling management. The MITA Systems cooling station is in fact composed:

• by a reinforced concrete tank, with a central dividing bulkhead that allows the separation of hot and cold water;
• and by a technical room for the coordination of all typical functions: this is thanks to an intuitive touch-screen PLC.

The basic version of the cooling unit enables energy and water savings through automated regulation of a number of parameters:

• actuation, management and control of the pumping unit and motor fan unit;
• optimization of water pressure;
• optimization of water salinity;
• control of water level in the tanks;
• treatment of tower water including through the dosing of antiscale-anticorrosive-antialgae additives.

Not only that. The customer can request to remotely view the parameters monitored by the Easybox cooling station and report them to his own management system: this is what Fonderia Casati, which is careful to be a foundry 4.0, also requested. Therefore, an Ethernet connection between the various system components and data exchange to the outside world via Modbus TCP communication protocol was provided.

All with reduced installation and maintenance costs: the components of the cooling plant are in fact preassembled and assembled on site using galvanized hardware. This facilitates disassembly even in case of any maintenance work.