De Lama

Sector: Machinery and equipment production for the pharmaceutical industry

Customised machines for sterilisation, washing and other processes, that are also compact due to the reduced size of the components used.

For over 70 years, De Lama has designed and produced sterilisation equipment and systems for the pharmaceutical industry, offering a wide range of solutions, technologies, machinery and parts for production lines.

“In recent years we entered the market for washing and sterilisation machines in the firm belief this sector has a strong growth potential. When considering all that is needed to produce medicines, the washing process has been managed by different companies in different ways because the regulatory bodies did not issue codified standards on the subject at the time.” states the technical manager of De Lama, Andrea Muggiasca.

Needs

“Over the last few years, the concept of cleaning validation has been introduced, because of which washing processes are required to be compliant with specific standards, that include the repeatability of cleaning cycles.

“We decided to focus on a new machine, for washing filling lines, built with high-quality components. We found out that companies using these machines often cannot accommodate them without making big changes to their production line layout. Our competitive advantage is that our customised and compact machines offer a smaller footprint because of our focus on reducing component dimensions.” Says Muggiasca.

Product development was performed in cooperation with Camozzi Automation. Muggiasca commented, “They were ready to innovate with us and helped us engineer a solution with a new, compact layout.”

Solution

“We have developed a custom-made pneumatic unit for De Lama to inflate and deflate door seals. Many other solutions for this purpose were composed of standard, poorly fitting products and components, and it was therefore difficult to assure a perfect seal.
“The co-design process carried out with the customer made it possible to reduce the space needed giving a major efficiency boost and better sealing control”, explained Alessio Venuto, sales engineer at Camozzi Automation.

The unit was jointly designed using the machine’s pneumatic diagram to establish the vacuum, monitoring and filling functions required.

It was then reduced in size and integrated into a single product, to which a Series MC air treatment unit and a Series D – size 1 smart valve island were added. The latter with a Profinet protocol to control the process valves.

Result

“This special and compact pneumatic unit created with Camozzi enabled us to reduce the overall dimensions, saving space within the technical cabin and at the same time ensuring excellent performance.” concludes De Lama.

Moreover, by integrating the Series D valve island with CoilVision® technology it was possible to offer De Lama the optimum solution for their machine. The preliminary study determined the type of valves and the smart functions required. This was followed by the accurate assembly and testing of components, first on a pilot machine and later on the autoclaves produced for sale, avoiding any problems at a later stage.

Series D Valve Island with CoilVision® Technology

An important aspect of Series D and of Camozzi Automation’s approach in general is the attention given to monitoring (remotely) the wear and efficiency status of components and the detection of possible anomalies.

Series D is able to track the efficiency of the product over time and communicate possible failures or problems. At Camozzi Automation, monitoring has evolved into the ability of components to predict their own health status. This technology can be managed remotely by the user through Camozzi’s proprietary web App UVIX, with all functionality available on PCs, Industrial PCs tablets and Human-Machine Interfaces sharing the operating systems installed on most smartphones. In case of failures or component replacement alerts, the applications’ Near Field Communication system allows users to copy the key parameters to their smartphone.

«A special and compact pneumatic unit created with Camozzi enabled us to reduce the overall dimensions, saving space within the technical cabin and at the same time ensuring excellent performance»

Andrea Muggiasca
Technical Manager of De Lama