An automatic system designed for the tanning industry to stack hides at the exit of another operating machine positioned upstream. Among the highlights seen during the latest edition of Simac Tanning Tech is Big Brother, the new stacker designed by Nexus Automation, a Vicenza-based industrial automation company. The machinery aims to revolutionize the leather depositing process compared to traditional stackers: in fact, it is capable of performing the same function in much smaller spaces and without operator intervention in stacking on trestles.
In detail, Big Brother can handle hides up to 3.4 meters in a machine space of 3.5 meters, compared to 7 of the machines on the market so far. To its very small footprint and ease of transport (it can be moved without a crane), it combines reduced energy consumption: 0.9 kWh versus 6. It also features an automatic self-learning system for leather characteristics.
"Basically the operator only has to press the power button, then the machine tares itself," explains Mirco Roncolato, managing director of Nexus Automation. "We also managed to include an automatic system for leather centering and depositing, which does not require the presence of the operator at the stand. Centering, moreover, is done on barycenter, so using the weight as a reference and not the size of the hide: this allows us to couple large hides, grain to grain, without slipping and falling."
Big Brother is the result of a year of design followed by a year and a half of testing, during which it was tried in places with different environmental characteristics and on different hides: this allowed every detail to be fine-tuned. "It is such an innovative machine that it has to be metabolized," Roncolato explains, "but it comes from our knowledge of the needs of the tanning industry. Big Brother is currently installed in a tannery in the Vicenza area, where it can be seen in operation, touched and tested. Seeing is believing.
