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ITALTECNO ACQUIRES GLASSCHIMICA

Dear everyone,

Since 1974, Italtecno has established itself as a well-known provider of special plants, equipment and technologies for aluminium finishing, waste water treatment and automatic die cleaning for extrusion dies; we are now glad to announce the acquisition of the company GLASSCHIMICA SRL, a 40-year-old company supplier of instruments, glassware and reagents for all kinds of laboratories.

“The purchase of Glasschimica srl will also represent an additional after sale service for Italtecno to offer its customers (anodizing, powder coating and extrusion companies)” says Dr. Walter Dalla Barba, CEO of Italtecno, “and it will help all customers in increasing their R&D and quality performance”.

Glasschimica srl was originally founded by Dr. Walter Dalla Barba 40 years ago, so this purchase also carries the additional meaning of bringing back home such business: Glasschimica srl will be incorporated as a division of Italtecno srl.

Our hope is to increase long-term cooperation with present and future customers thanks also to this new activity.

We take the opportunity to remind you about the important appointment for our aluminium industry of the 12th Congress Aluminium Two Thousand in Bologna 19-23 September 2023, sponsored by Italtecno: during or after such event Italtecno customers are also invited to visit the new and larger Italtecno headquarters in Fiorano Modenese, when you can meet our team and Glasschimica team in person.

The Glasschimica division will also participate with an exhibition booth at the Royal Hotel Carlton in Bologna during the Congress.

See you soon,

With warm regards

Italtecno s.r.l.

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BOLOGNA HOSTS THE INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL ON ALUMINIUM

12th ALUMINIUM TWO THOUSAND World Congress

in collaboration with 7th ICEB (International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark)

September the 23rd marked the end of the Aluminium Two Thousand World Congress, held at the Royal Hotel Carlton in Bologna from the 19 to the 23 of September. The event, which has now reached its 12th edition, saw the participation of more than 80 highly qualified “aluspecialists” from businesses, universities and associations from more than 30 countries, all presenting the most innovative technologies and their applications for aluminium to a specialized, international audience.

An important mention goes to the prestigious collaboration with the Engineering Department of the University of Bologna and of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, under the direction of prof. Lorenzo Donati. Indeed, ever since 2015 the congress has been hosting the International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark (ICEB), the biggest event in Europe regarding the analysis of the most recent extrusion technologies by way of FEM simulation, thus promoting the ever-so-desirable exchange between university and industry.

During the first three days of the event, the speakers covered themes encompassing all fields of aluminium application; among the tens of highly qualified papers presented, some were selected by the university committee. The following papers were awarded for each category:

  • Foundry 1: Paweł K. Krajewski, A. Lindsay Greer, Jiri Orava, Beata Gracz, Grzegorz Piwowarski, Magdalena Kawalec, Ewa Olejnik, Witold K. Krajewski with AlZn-matrix cast composites reinforced with Ti aluminides;
  • Foundry 2: Giulia Scampone, Antonio Russo, Roberto Muzzani, Alessio Carminati, Giulio Timelli with The influence of surface segregation on the anodizing of AlSi11Cu2(Fe) diecastings;
  • Extrusion 1: joint winners Marco Negozio, Riccardo Pelaccia, Lorenzo Donati, Barbara Reggiani, Sara Di Donato with Microstructure evolution and FEM prediction on AA6XXX alloys and Riccardo Pelaccia, Marco Negozio, Sara Di Donato, Lorenzo Donati, Barbara Reggiani with Recent trends in nitrogen cooling modelling of extrusion dies;
  • Extrusion 2: Anders Nesse, Mads Iddberg, Ole Runar Myhr, Trond Furu with Optimization of geometric design of extruded products incorporating properties, cost and co2 footprint;
  • Extrusion 3: Andreas Schiffl, Serena Tourey, Patrick Riepler with Influence of gas oven temperature on the microstructure and extrudability of Al-Mg-Si aluminium alloys.
  • Surface finishing:Jude Mary Runge with Anodizing Strategies for Complex Alloys;
  • Innovative Technologies: Martina Montinaro with Innovative technologies in aluminium industry for driving the decarbonization process and achieving a business jolting.

Moving on from the beating heart of knowledge and innovation, Aluminium Two Thousand also confirmed itself, once again, to be a networking opportunity like no other – not only for those who decided to maximise their visibility by booking a booth in the exhibition area.

Indeed, just as it had been at its dawning in 1990, plenty of activities were arranged around the conferences to encourage socializing among participants while at the same time facilitating their cultural enrichment. We’re not just talking about the exhibits by renowned artists next to the congress rooms, but also and most importantly about the wonderful classical concert offered in the historical Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi, as well as the elegant gala dinner held in the opulent Palazzo Gnudi. Furthermore, great opportunities were reserved for those who stayed past the end of the congress sessions: on Friday a choice between an advanced anodizing workshop with field excellence dr. Jude M. Runge, PhD, and an organized tour of three of the most important museums of the close-by Motorovalley, ending then with the cultural tour of the historical and unique city of Ravenna on Saturday.

Lastly, the constant feature of this congress: the chance to register an accompanying person to an entirely dedicated program leading them to discover the wonders of Bologna, making the distance easier on congress participants and allowing the many foreign guests to make the most of their stay in Italy.

For those interested in the covered topics who didn’t get the chance to attend, it is possible to request the speakers’ program as well as information about getting the complete presentations at aluminium2000@interallpublications.it

WalterDallaBarba

THE ART OF ALUMINIUM FINISHING AND ITS ORIGINAL WAY OF COMMUNICATING

Italtecno’s slogan is “the art of aluminium finishing”. It’s not by chance, as its technicians take a precious lesson from the artist’s job, always called to introduce one innovation after the other, following the direction the market is moving in and, sometimes, even anticipating its trends, always having to find “the way”.

“The way” is inherent to everything we do. Art and culture help us find it, because they always bring about new ideas. And in doing anything, we do start from ideas, but we also need to have them become operative, to find their way into a project, product or service. Still, there are infinite ways to do anything: it could be done in an effective way, allowing the ideas to fulfil their potential, or it could be done in a way that doesn’t affect the market, maybe because it isn’t the right time or it’s prohibitively expensive. It isn’t easy to find the right way, because reality is complex and the way we go about ideas is just as important as the ideas themselves. There are no right or wrong ones, all ideas can be great, but, if we go about them the wrong way, they remail sterile. I know many people who have genius ideas but who can’t see them through, maybe because they can’t make them practical or because the materials they use are too expensive. In our field, for example, we have to find the right materials, something valid and sturdy, and we have to make sure they’re processed safely and with minimal waste. Furthermore, the machines we build have to be aesthetically pleasing, with a look that attracts buyers, because, in mechanics too, it’s beauty that wins, not just functionality. Of course, it’s hard to find an industrial product that has no competition, unless you have one of those rare ideas from which proper inventions come from, but even those get copied rather fast. So, we have no choice left but to rack our brains to keep innovating, to find ways of always doing something more than other manufacturers; like artists did in the Renaissance, not so much competing among each other but rather in a constant process of emulation born from comparation.

Ever since its debut in 1974, Italtecno has focused on surface treatments for aluminium, offering whole or partial plants for use in the phases of anodising, coating, waste water treatment and extrusion die cleaning. In what ways do your innovative technologies take the environment’s needs into consideration?

It is essential to any technological project to keep a mindful approach to the environment’s safety. Our attention to the environment has focused particularly on sanitising waste waters from anodising and coating treatments, which require aluminium to be immersed in tanks filled with specific chemicals. After each round in these tanks, the treated components need to be washed, requiring a huge water amount and turnover, water which clearly needs to be sanitised before it’s dumped in the environment. Even assuming that producers keep up with regulations and that their waste water treatments work like clockwork, it still leads to an incredible waste of water. Just think: the average aluminium plant uses between 40.000 and 60.000 litres of water per hour, 24 hours a day, 300 days a year, considering holidays and days off. If we multiply this by the thousands of plants all over the world, we get some staggering numbers.

That’s why we put together results from our chemical and plant research divisions to give our clients tailor-made solutions for their waste water and primary water treatment. While following all applicable regulations and environmental standards, which change from one Country to another, we have provided countless water treatment plants all over the worlds in these last forty years: open-cycle chemical-physical plants, zero discharge close-circuit plants with evaporators, partial recycling plants, sludge treatments, final water treatments, deionisers, acid recovery equipment, phosphoric acid recovery systems, quartz filtering and osmosis equipment. Close-circuit zero discharge plants in particular allow for extraordinary business savings while also being an essential instrument for environmental conservation, since they keep reusing all of the same water but for a small percentage (about 5%) that gets lost along the process or becomes part of sludge waste, later disposed of by specialised companies; still, with a plant like this not a single drop is dispersed in the environment. Some wonder how long you can reuse the same water for: forever, just like water that rains down into aquifers to later flow out of springs, drinkable once again.  We rarely think that what rains from the sky is the same dirty water that gets dumped into rivers and sea and which leaves all its pollutants and impurities on the ground when evaporating. As with all ingenious things, the first example of purification comes to us from nature herself. That’s why Leonardo da Vinci looked at the natural world for inspiration when trying to invent anything. Nature is the first teacher and that’s why artists, like Leonardo used to say, are competing with nature.

About the intersection of art, industry and nature, there’s an article in an issue of your magazine “Aluminium Extrusion and Finishing” about these beautiful aluminium outer walls decorating factories with artistic images…

They’re called Walls to communicate: a refined and sophisticated technology allows us to use perforated aluminium sheets to build images, logos, visual designs and various visual combinations that become vehicles to share messages, slogans or simply sensations. It’s a patented ventilated façade system, called Decorcoat®, which enables a reduction of the building’s energy consumption and consequently of CO2 emissions, as well as offering architects, designers and city planners an unlimited range of possibilities for projects of great impact. With these walls you can, for example, turn an old factory into an aesthetically pleasing building, especially if reproducing the surrounding landscape. The technology we use transmits an image to the machine, which then replicates said image by punching holes in the metal. It isn’t our technology though, we’re just promoting it because these walls can be made from aluminium and because it offers an interesting architectural solution.
We’re eager to form alliances and collaborations with other firms, because in these days no business institution can count itself as an island. It’s plain to see in districts, where every business takes care of a part of the processes that makes up the whole manufacturing line, almost to the point of making all involved businesses essential to each other.

Your inclination towards business alliances, towards exchange, towards “the way of the word” shows you’re coming from a place of openness and of not accepting to exist in vacuums.

What you’re saying can be summed up with one word: communication. Without communication there is no business. Even if you have a product that’s the world’s best, you still need communication to sell it. A dear departed friend used to tell me: “If someone has the most beautiful singing voice but performs inside a telephone booth, it’s the same as not having that beautiful voice at all.” Communicating means talking with others, letting others hear you voice. It’s the art of communication that promotes each business and makes them grow, which is why magazines and papers are so important. And art too is communication: an artist or writer uses their tools to communicate their feelings, their thoughts. Only if their inventions go beyond being ideas, if they give birth to intellectual creations, only then can they influence humanity. The same thing can be said about entrepreneurs, who need to communicate, to meet other entrepreneurs, to make alliances and deals, in order for their products to affect the economy, as well as the quality of life of cities, nations and the planet itself.

We at Italtecno consider communication to be so important that, in 1982, we founded Interall Publications, which doesn’t just publish aluminium-related books and magazines – like our quarterly “Aluminium Extrusion and Finishing”. It also created a unique, worldwide communication tool: the biennial “Aluminium Two Thousand World Congress” (whose 12th edition will be held in Bologna, Italy, at the Royal Hotel Carlton, from 19 to 23 September), with me as president, speeches from the highest aluminium experts on the planet and a great attendance turnout, despite the significant registration fee, thanks also to the artistic and cultural activities we offer on the side.

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ALUMINIUM TWO THOUSAND

News and developments in the aluminium business at the 12th ALUMINIUM TWO THOUSAND world congress partnered with ICEB WORLD CONGRESS

A unique opportunity to expand your knowledge and do business

Bologna, Italy (Royal Hotel Carlton)
19-23 September 2023

More than 80 highly qualified “aluspecialist” speakers from companies, universities and associations all over the world are coming together (as they have been doing every two years since 1990) to introduce the most innovative technologies and applications in the aluminium field to a specialised, international public.

Aluminium Two Thousand has become an irreplaceable networking occasion for all operators of the aluminium business (be it extrusion, foundry, melting, finishing or exhausted water treatment). But how did it come to be?

We asked its creator, Walter Dalla Barba, CEO of Italtecno Srl (Fiorano Modenese), president of Interall and of the Aluminium Two Thousand World Congress.

In the 80’s I used to attend international congresses about surface treatment and extrusion techniques, and I wondered why aluminium was only treated as one among many, despite it being the third most common element after oxygen and silicon and the most used metal (right after iron) to manufacture millions of products. Fast forward to the end of 1988: having just come back from Paris Interfinish congress, I was talking with a long-term collaborator of Italtecno, journalist Velello Muratori, and another business partner of mine and we decided to organize ourselves a congress that would give due credit to this noble metal. We set the date of the first edition, March 1990, and the title, Aluminium Two Thousand, because of the nearing Y2K. We had no way of knowing whether ten or a hundred people would have come to the Raffaello Hotel in Modena, and yet more than two hundred came, despite the odd Arab refusing to attend due to a lack of five stars hotels in the city.

Still, this made me realise we had attracted a high-end public and that our congress had to meet those expectations. We called in managers and businessmen from the most important businesses in the field, both from Italy and other manufacturing countries. And we were successful – not just with the scientific part, but also with the side activities we had planned: to get to north-west Sardinia, where we would spend the following two days and nights, we had booked an entire Meridiana flight, but it was so full we had to leave some people out. Ever since 1990, all the activities we’ve offered – from gala dinners to sightseeing tours, from activities for those just accompanying to cooking classes (which Americans seem to really enjoy) – have gained more and more following.

Who are the congress speakers?

According to topic, we have called in technicians from extrusion, anodizing, coating and melting companies, but also economists, like professor Cesare Garzia from Bocconi university, who are going to present their analysis of the trends and outlook of the aluminium business as well as the overlap with general economy.

We’ll talk about the different fields of application for extruded aluminium, about the issues with implementing various alloys and about applying aluminium to architecture, automotives, transportation, costume jewellery and furniture. We have indeed seen at the Salone del Mobile (Milan furniture expo) that aluminium is trending for home and office interior design. We’ll leave a lot of space to innovative technologies and scholarly research.

About that, you have managed to have business and university meet through the synergy with the International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark (ICEB), the biggest event in Europe for the newest development of extrusion technology and its analysis through FEM simulation.

When did the collaboration with ICEB first start?

It all began in 2003, when researchers from the Engineering Department of the University of Bologna came to our congress, which was in Rome that year. Now, ever since the 6th edition, we also host the International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark, an event attended by researchers from all over the world which previously used to alternate between Bologna and Berlin. This is why I’m proud of my contribution, not just for enabling the highly desirable exchange between universities and manufacturers in a constructive, friendly setting, but also for bringing to Bologna the excellence of aluminium studies.

What’s this year’s program?

For three whole days we’ll hold three parallel sessions to delve into the details of all topics. Each paper has been examined by the congress scientific committee in order to only select the most innovative studies and researches, the most recent manufacturing applications and the most interesting case studies.

At the same time, to ensure the best possible stay in Bologna, we’ll have entertaining side events every night: a gala dinner, an exclusive concert, a tour for accompanying people, a technical tour and a final, beautiful social tour through the charming historical cities surrounding Bologna, including Ravenna, capital of the Roman Empire from 408 to 476.

To read the preliminary list of titles and speakers you can visit our website: www.aluminium2000.com

Interall Srl – Phone +39 059 282390