Legnoarredo training centre

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.

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”.

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.

Photo Credits: Leonardo Pollavini

Legnoarredo Training Centre