Legnoarredo training centre
Furniture Technologies
STANDING BY FUTURE CRAFT WOODWORKERS 4.0
The new LegnoArredo Training Centre, ITS Rosario Messina in Brianza, an area that is at the heart of Italian design and furniture, has chosen SCM to set up an exceptional woodworking workshop. The laboratory is fitted with twenty-odd machines, representing the most important technologies, on which the future woodworking professionals will learn the secrets of the trade. But the partnership goes further, as the students will be able to take part in visits and work experiences at the plants of the Italian group and the teaching staff will be able to undertake refresher courses on the “digital factory”, in the new SCM Group Campus
Fabio is fifteen years old. He’s studying to become a woodwork operator and has dreams of working in the family business, producing custom furniture. The hours he has spent in the laboratory, practicing on the machines, are the ones he enjoys the most, he tells us, whilst his classmates nearby are finishing to coat the wooden covers for the school’s support beams.
Mattia, like Fabio, has decided to enrol in the LegnoArredo Training Centre in Lentate sul Seveso and, even though he is still in his first year, his ideas are very clear: “Since I was little I’ve always loved working with wood. Whenever I could, after school, I used to go and help my grandfather in his workshop”. Of this school, lying in the Brianza area, at the heart of the Italian furniture industry, Mattia enjoys most of all the possibility of learning practical skills, as well as how to operate the most advanced technologies. “When I grow up”, he reveals to us, “I’d like to be a carver. In a month I will go on a work experience placement in a workshop specialising in this type of process”.
Recently turned fifteen, but determined like, perhaps, few youngsters of his age, Federico seems more captivated by the new “smart” face of the woodworking trade. He is working on a morbidelli m100 CNC machining centre, the most advanced model amongst the almost twenty SCM machines used in the school. “It’s interesting to see how technology is able to let us do special machining operations that would otherwise be impossible”, comments the young student, who would like to open his own kitchen furniture company. The morbidelli solution that he is practicing on is one of the drilling and routing “All-in-on technology” machining centres produced by SCM. This centre lets users produce pieces of any shape, also thanks to the Maestro cnc software, that meets any production requirement with utmost ease.
“Our students are mostly curious about the latest generation technologies like this one, that respond perfectly to the requirements of todays’ companies”, confirms Francesco Chinellato, Laboratory Manager of the Training Centre in Lentate sul Seveso. However, he adds, it is fundamental that these youngsters start from the basics. “We start with the first manual operations, even though our students will never actually do them in their jobs, like hand-made joints, that today are made exclusively with dowels or with the latest generation machines. And yet this allows our students to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the raw materials, the various differences in hardness and types of wood”.
As well as the Morbidelli CNC machining centre, with all the requirements for an Industry 4.0 approach, the laboratory includes a wide range of SCM solutions: from the hardy machines for craft woodworkers, greatly appreciated for their range topping features and continuous innovation, (minimax, formula, class and nova), to those designed specifically for small to mid-sized companies, like the latest compact sander, the multitasking dmc sd 60, ideal for thicknessing and sanding solid wood, as well as sanding veneered panels and finishing painted surfaces and a sergiani gs electronic control press, which is highly versatile and precise in machining veneered panels, hollow-core doors and multi-layer panels. The school is able to carry out all the machining operations: planing, profiling, trimming, pressing, panel-sizing, sanding, edgebanding and drilling. Whilst students can practice the more advanced operations with the machining centre.
“This woodworking laboratory has been recreated according to academic criteria”, explains Luca Bergantini, SCM Italy Branch Manager, stressing that the project with the Fondazione ITS Rosario Messina, is the most important project at the national level. “There are no other professional training centres that can count on this level of technological equipment”.
The collaboration with the LegnoArredo Training Centre extends beyond the laboratory. SCM’s technologies and know-how are also taught in the classroom, where students can learn about the software and the digital services involved in secondary woodworking processes. Not only, students can visit and take part in work experience placements at the SCM plants, whilst the teaching staff can take part in training courses, at the new SCM Group Campus. “For us it’s extremely important to support a centre of excellence like this”, adds Bergantini. “And in such an important market as the Italian one and in a region like Brianza, renowned worldwide for its furniture and design. In a sector that evolves so quickly, it is essential to be able to provide prompt and concrete answers, which are constantly up to date with the new technological challenges”.
With its new premises, built with environmentally sustainable criteria and designed to welcome more than 300 students, the Training Centre in Lentate sul Seveso, has become the most important training centre in the sector in Italy. “This centre was born from the requests of companies that needed to increase their human resources with youngsters that can develop a keen interest for this job. All the students who are following our courses have already been ‘booked’ by the companies of the sector”, states Angelo Candiani, General Director of the Fondazione ITS Rosario Messina.
The youngsters that come from secondary schools can choose to enrol in the basic three-year “woodwork operator” course and then carry on for another year to obtain their professional diploma as “woodwork technician”. For the higher education specialisation the centre also offers a higher education course in the wooden furniture sector, with two distinct options: “Higher level technician in product, marketing and internationalisation” and “Higher level technician in design and industrialisation”, which is more focused on Industry 4.0.
“The training approach is extremely hands-on”, explains the coordinator, professor Luigi Mettica. “In the first year 25% of the time is spent in the workshop. Moreover, from the second year onwards and also for the higher education courses, 30% of the time is spent on work experience, with companies of the sector”.
The students learn about the material and learn how to work it, creating, with the most advanced technologies, beautiful as well as useful products. Without forgetting the root where everything starts: the wood. A state of the art training experience, but always realised with heart and passion, in line with SCM’s “Smart&Human Factory”.
Photo Credits: Leonardo Pollavini
Legnoarredo Training Centre
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