Industry 5.0: The new technological paradigm in the production of Gold and Silver ingots
The beginning of Industry 5.0 redefines the role of machines as collaborative partners able to support and improve human skills.
Industry 5.0 is the natural evolution of Industry 4.0: its aim is to increase
- efficiency
- flexibility/adabtability
- customization
Moreover, Industry 5.0 aims to reduce significantly energy and resource consumption, it promotes sustainability of productive processes to reduce the environmental footprint and waste.
A new approach to machine project
Tera Automation, pioneer of innovation always up-to-date on market developments, has embraced this revolutionary paradigm by relying on a new work philosophy.
The latter embodies how Tera has interpreted Industry 5.0 and involves the following objectives:
- Industry 4.0, as a solid milestone.
- Reduction of machines’ footprint to meet the special space requirements of most customers.
- Reduction of energy consumption, which embraces the concept of sustainability mentioned above.
- Reduction of consumables for improved corporate finances and reduced environmental impact.
Innovation applied on new machinery for Gold and Silver Ingot Production
This new work philosophy is mostly reflected in our tunnel furnaces, Tera’s flagship where we have invested a great deal of time and effort to innovate the technology behind these machines in a 5.0 perspective.
Tera’s T-Barmaster™ are patented induction tunnel furnaces for the continuous production of high-quality gold and silver ingots from 1 oz to 1000 oz.
The traditional version of our T-Barmaster involves the casting of precious metals grain and requires the use of ingot molds with lid and spacers.
In the latest versions are based on compactness and sustainability and boast a higher level of technology.
Minimum Footprint, Maximum Efficiency
The first real attempt to revolutionize our T-Barmaster™ in a 5.0 perspective had as its main objective the reduction of the machine’s footprint, and is embodied in the T-Barmaster Power Loop.
This particular version of our best-selling T-Barmaster furnace is designed for companies with special space requirements and aims to make the most powerful traditional furnaces smaller.
The distinctive feature of the T-Barmaster Power Loop is indeed its compactness. Unlike standard models, this new version does not develop lengthwise, but is configured as a closed loop.
This dramatically reduces the overall footprint of the furnace, without affecting its performance. Indeed, we managed to reduce the footprint by 45%.
Optimizing Performace and Reduce Consumption
Following the launch of the T-Barmaster Power Loop, the next step in pursuing our new work philosophy was to focus on minimizing consumption and optimizing performance.
Our reflections and commitment to achieve this goal at some point resulted in the ambitious question: why not design a tunnel furnace without spacers?
Starting from this ambitious idea we designed our T-Barmaster Spaceless.
The “Spaceless” concept is geared towards maximum optimization of our tunnel furnaces: smaller footprint, lower consumption, optimum performance.
As we have already seen in our article on the new tunnel furnaces design, this extremely compact furnace represents the evolution of a traditional T-Barmaster.
- 25% reduction in footprint
- 50% reduction in consumption.
The incredible performance and considerable savings achieved with the T-Barmaster Spaceless for kilobar production highlighted the countless benefits this type of technology would provide for the production of Good Delivery bars.
From this initial thought our T-Barmaster Spaceless Good Delivery was born.
Good Delivery Quality Standards
T-Barmaster Spaceless Good Delivery is an integrated system that allows grain to be transformed into high-quality Good Delivery bars in a fully automated and continuous production process.
It meets the most critical requirements for precious metals refineries, notably high productivity and small footprint, as well as considerable savings on consumables due to the absence of spacers.
It can be integrated with a T-Doselift, an automated bucket conveyor belt for transferring, weighing and discharging the fine gold or silver grains into the graphite mold.
Some of the key benefits of T-Barmaster Spaceless Good Delivery include:
- Its special “U” configuration ensures a significant footprint reduction
- With the same consumption, you get three times the performance of traditional T-Barmaster
- There is no need for spacers thanks to the multi-position pusher
- Ingot molds are compact and without lid
New casting techniques: how to reduce the number of steps and optimise time and costs
Although the T-Barmaster Spaceless Good Delivery is already a great achievement, we at Tera were not about to stop there and have continued to work undaunted on the next step in our 5.0 philosophy.
The inspiration came from some of our customers who expressed their desire to skip the melting of precious metals grains and obtain the bar directly from crystals.
The inspiration came from some of our customers who expressed their desire to skip the melting of precious metals grains and obtain the bar directly from crystals.
Tera team managed to fulfil this need with the ambitious project of the IT-Onecast.
IT-Onecast is a system for the production of top quality Good Delivery bars in a single production cycle.
In essence, our IT-Onecast is the only machine in the world capable of producing Good Delivery bars of the highest quality starting directly from refined metal.
Resulting from the ingenious combination of two established and efficient technologies, IT-Onecast allows metal to be melted in its different forms (powder or crystals) and poured directly into the ingot mold.
It consists of two main sections:
- Induction tilting furnace for melting refined metal
- Spaceless Good Delivery: automatic tunnel furnace for dosing, homogenization, solidification and cooling of ingots in Good Delivery standard of the highest quality.
Given that the IT-Onecast stems from a functional and ambitious projection of the T-Barmaster Spaceless Good Delivery, both share the same key points and singularities mentioned above.
What’s more, unlike the T-Barmaster Spaceless, the IT-Onecast
- makes it possible to go directly from the refined metal to the finished ingot
- requires more compact ingot molds, as the volume of molten metal is less than that of precious metals grains, and this dramatically affects the cost of molds and reduces waste material.
T-Barmaster Power Loop, T-Barmaster Spaceless – also for Good Delivery standards - and IT-Onecast are the concrete application of the various steps that we have been pursuing to put our interpretation of the 5.0 philosophy into practice.
A path of innovation, cutting-edge technology and continuous improvements to guarantee our customers increasingly high-performance and competitive solutions.
We have reduced footprint, time and environmental impact, while increasing productivity and quality standards.
Our machines can produce the highest quality gold and silver bars in small space, with low consumption and directly from the refined metal. And now the question is… What other innovations are in store?
