Sandvik Coromant Strengthens Its Global R&D Presence

Last month, Sandvik Coromant inaugurated its newly updated Research and Development (R&D) center for solid end mills in Rovereto, Italy. The unit is the company's first R&D office in Italy and the third to be upgraded as part of a new global R&D cluster including offices in Sheffield, UK, and Halmstad, Sweden.

The cluster is responsible for research and new product development within the areas of round tools for drilling, threading, and milling. The sites have been subject to a multimillion SEK investment including purpose built work environments, test workshops and state of the art laboratories. In Italy the center has also received partial funding from the autonomous region of Trento, a part of Italy that lends strong support to research and development as part of its economy.

“The investments in our round tools operations in Halmstad, Sheffield and Rovereto supports the development of a more global R&D and is also an important part of the increasing diversity within Sandvik Coromant”, says Göran Berter, Vice President R&D at Sandvik Coromant.

New Demands
As the industry becomes more and more advanced the demand on rapid R&D and speed in production increases. From the get go Sandvik Coromant has focused on technological leadership through R&D. The company’s global setup allows it to work closely with customer development projects resulting in optimized products, value added applications and new productivity standards. Today the company is cooperating with more than 70 external competence centers, universities and institutes. Some of the external research projects relate to for example:

• Alloy development,
• Application development
• Development of new calculation and simulation techniques
• Material modeling
• Supporting unique competence

All three centers have a strong collaboration with external partners like universities and research centers. For example in Halmstad the unit is located next to Halmstad University and in Sheffield next to the Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (AMRC), dedicated to working with manufacturing businesses, from global aerospace giants to local Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s). The R&D center in Rovereto cooperates closely with, among others, the University of Trento and Politecnico of Milano.

In order to further enhance the unique competence within round tools, the company has chosen to strengthen the development teams in the UK, Sweden and Italy with additional competence.

"We have increased our focus and ambition within round tools. It is a way for us to be closer to our customers and partners in order to engage in development projects, linking those to the latest trendsetting technologies", says David Goulbourne R&D Manager Round Solid Tools.

The Rovereto Site
The new R&D center in Italy encompasses about 800 m2in total which is twice the size of the old one. The workshop and laboratory has been renewed and the machine park extended with state of the art machines and the latest generation 3D scanning and simulation technology.

The center in Rovereto is located at the same place as a manufacturing unit for the production of carbide solid end mills that are sold all over the world. The history of the plant dates back to 1925 when drills were produced under the brand Cofler.

Competence
The team in Italy is comprised of engineers and laboratory technicians. A third of the team is female, including the department manager, Giovanna Malagnino who also led the building development project.

“Sandvik has always supported diversity. The Rovereto R&D center is a good example to follow, especially in Italy. When I began to study Engineering at the Politecnico of Turin, female students were an obvious minority. Today, I’m really proud to be a manger of a team of competent and motivated engineers and technicians where a third of them are women,” says Giovanna Malagnino.

The department’s activities include tool design, experimentation, and the development of new products, technological research, new milling techniques and new materials.

Short Facts
Recently Giovanna Malagnino was awarded the "Women’s 2013 Award of Merit and Talent," an initiative which aims to promote positive management models. The award was presented by ALDAI, the Executives Association for Industrial Companies in Lombardy, under the patronage of the Province and the Municipality of Milan.

Sandvik Coromant's R&D is built on three cornerstones: finding new work piece materials, new machining methods and new machining concepts.

The R&D centers in the cluster have the following areas of competence:

• Sheffield - Drilling & composites machining
• Rovereto - Profile end milling
• Halmstad – Threading