Creo Customer: Carpigiani and Other Delights

By GEOFF HEDGES | Published: OCTOBER 10, 2011

“Carpigiani is a company that makes people happy,” says Patrick Hopkins, Head of Carpigiani Gelato University.

Is it because the Bologna, Italy manufacturer is a technology and market leader, priding itself on its innovation and decades of leadership in food machinery?

Is it because the company continually invests in research, design, and high-quality components?

Is it Carpigiani’s attention to safety and nutrition awareness?

Is it because the company has shaved 40% of its design time by adopting Creo’s direct modeling approach, replacing SolidWorks and SolidEdge?

We can’t be sure. I suggest we do more research. Much, much more research….

Creo Customer: Machine Manufacturer Perfects the Spaghetti Noodle

By GEOFF HEDGES | Published: OCTOBER 31, 2011

You might not guess it, but that tangle of pasta you ate for supper last night was a design and engineering triumph. Chances are the noodles were uniform in length and diameter, cooked consistently, and appeared all the same color. That kind of perfection doesn’t come easily. Just ask Creo customer Pavan Group. The company manufactures industrial machinery for pasta to ensure your noodles are the same every time. Pavan’s designs are made so:

• Mixers can be quickly disassembled and cleaned thoroughly.
• Dies can be swapped easily for changing pasta shapes. (Do you know Wikipedia lists more than 100 types of pasta noodles?)
• Humidity and drying times are consistent throughout drying phases.

Pavan makes sure you don’t see “starch swelling” or discoloration either. These things don’t hurt the taste of your food, but inconsistencies turn off consumers.

Attending to all these little details has made Pavan a world leader in industrial pasta machinery. Today, Pavan dominates 35% of the market globally and sells its machinery into 120 countries. Read more about how Creo’s direct modeling approach helps Pavan with ever-changing customer and market demands here.

“With Creo, we’re able to focus on design, rather than the methods supported by the design tool,” explains Sandro Rasera, Technical Director of the Pavan Group. “It really means that we can best leverage the company’s true technical asset – the years of experience across the whole design team.”

The Pavan Group sells equipment under brand names Pavan (Machinery for Pasta), Mapimpianti (cooking extrusion systems for snacks, pellets and direct expanded snacks,cereals and pasta; stackable potato chips lines), Toresani (machinery for [filled] fresh pasta, gnocchi), Montoni (dies), Stiavelli (packaging equipment), Dizma (packaging equipment) and Pizeta (turnkey conveyor systems).

Oh, and if you remain unconvinced spaghetti isn’t interesting from an design engineering perspective, there’s this:

Creo Customer: Van Beek Moves it Around with Screw Conveyers

By Geoff Hedges | Published: September 5, 2011 

Do you know what I wonder? Does a guy just wake up one day and say, “I’m going to make my fortune in screw conveyers”? Or is the entrepreneurial process more complicated than that?

I don’t have an answer, but I do know that 70 years ago, Van Beek BV in the Netherlands started just such a business and apparently it’s been a successful endeavor. Today the company advertises itself as “The Standard in Screw Conveyers”  and the eight engineers at Van Beek now manage 1200 customer screw conveyer projects year after year.

Screw conveyers, based on the Archimedes screw pump, carry product from station to station on factory assembly lines, load bulk trucks, move hazardous waste, and more. Van Beek BV says each project is unique, last minute, and fluid. So, engineers at the company custom design orders and have come to expect many last-minute changes until the machinery is installed and in production. At the same time, the company says all that uncertainty is no trouble–at least not since Van Beek BV started using direct modeling software.

“Creo’s direct modeling approach has proven to be very fast for us,” says  Karten Verhoeven. “Even after many iterations of design changes, the models can be handled by anybody in the team. All our unexpected changes could easily be incorporated into the models.” This episode of The Product Design Show is a little bit history lesson, a little bit physics class, and a whole lot screw pumps.  Watch toward the end to get a look at Van Beek’s machinery.