Today we look at the success story of Businaro, a company specializing in the design and manufacture of sharpening machines for industrial cutting blades. Briefly speaking, this success story shows how decisive the two following factors were in beating the competition: a) the ability to radically innovate our product with respect to markets standards, achieving performances that would be unimaginable following the traditional construction standards; b) the ability to offer a reliable and efficient worldwide customer service.
These two combined elements guarantee a very high level of customer satisfaction, making Businaro a leader in the field of sharpeners for industrial circular saws, for customers who demand faster set-up and sharpening times than what the market standards have to offer.
What was the challenging request that the customer made of Businaro?
“Sharpening industrial cutting blades (mainly circular saws) may seem a trivial operation to the untrained eye. But it is worth 
remembering that the saws we sharpen work on machines that have an hourly rate varying from 3,000.00 € to 5,000.00 €. This means that a machine downtime even of a few minutes generates very high costs for our customers. For this reason, Businaro’ sharpening machines must ensure maximum cutting reliability during all work shifts.
In addition, we should not forget that our sharpening machines can be designed for different metal materials and for performing in increasingly shorter times. A US company submitted to us the request to be able to rely on a faster sharpening machine than the industry standard, which could be handled even by unskilled personnel, and to perform saw replacement operations at the end of a shift and not during, as it sometimes happens.”
What were the main issues?
‘Businaro therefore had to successfully deal with the following three issues:
- increase sharpening operation speed (including different materials);
- increase the reliability over time of the sharpened circular saws;
- reduce downtime and errors due to operator inexperience.
We thought of increasing the number of axes to increase the speed of our sharpening machines. We also worked on the materials we used and our control software to make the sharpening more reliable. Just as we thought of modifying our proprietary software by making its process less optional, thereby making it simpler for machine operators.
Our objectives (increasing productivity and reliability, avoiding unplanned stopping and downtime, enabling even personnel with little experience to operate the machine) were particularly ambitious and challenging. Thus, instead of working on incremental changes to existing machines, we decided to ‘throw our heart over the hurdle’ and come up with a completely different solution, a radical innovation, approaching the problem in a whole new way”.
What solutions did you propose and what factors aided Businaro in getting the job order?
“Our technical department got to work and began to generate ideas on possible solutions that, I’ll be candid, initially seemed to be only impractical theoretical ideas. However, Businaro’s young and talented engineers succeeded in realizing these ideas by transforming circular motion axes into linear ones. Businaro was thus able to design a radically innovative sharpening machine for industrial cutting blades as compared to those on the market.
This sharpening machine is in fact equipped exclusively with linear motion axes, which can execute the most complex geometries also by using interpolation.
We achieved a greater sharpening speed of industrial circular saws by increasing its (linear) axes and drastically reducing so-called ‘empty runs.’
In fact, thanks to high performance and very low inertia brush servo motors, we can increase movement speed by a lot during ‘empty runs,’ i.e., when a tool moves from one side of a tooth to the other and from one tooth to the next.
Additional efficiency was made possible by the software that Businaro has developed, which optimizes both the sharpening process and the displacements during ‘empty runs’.
Businaro made another innovation to meet the need for making the sharpening process ‘simple’ even for operators with little experience.
Our engineers collaborated with our partner software house to design and create a hardware and software system able to recognise the geometry of the circular saw tooth to be sharpened and automatically programme the best and most efficient sharpening process.
Therefore, a completely automatic sharpening process is activated once a circular saw is mounted into our machine.
The engineering revolution that we have achieved is visible even to the less experienced naked eye.
In fact, visually comparing a traditional sharpening machine for circular saws and the last one created by Businaro, you can realize at a glance that all the mechanical components have been moved onto the exterior of the machine”.
What advantages did the customer gain by entrusting this job order work to Businaro?
“Our innovative solution bringing the mechanical components outside the sharpening box guarantees the following advantages for our customers:
- Increased productivity;
- Simple and undemanding cleaning process at the end of the sharpening process;
- Next to no maintenance required (little or no component wear);
- Greater sharpening machine reliability over time;
- Greater sharpening precision;
- Ease of operation even by unskilled personnel thanks to our ‘‘intelligent’ software”.
What are Businaro’s overall distinguishing features?
Businaro’s distinguishing features are attributable to several factors.
Over the years, our company has improved its business strategies, focusing on the design and production of highly reliable machines for sharpening industrial cutting blades, making them also user-friendly.
Along these lines, Businaro recently designed and implemented an innovative touch-screen technology unique in the world that draws in all respects from the simplicity and intuitiveness typical of smartphones.
A further element of distinction is the excellent service that we provide to our customers.
We have developed a well-structured pre-and post-sales customer service over the years, also thanks to our close cooperation with our US customers, who will not consider even the greatest product without a customer assistance service.
Hence, over time, Businaro developed the means to provide worldwide before-and-after-sales customer service, including appropriate advice and assistance.
Our company actually provides its industrial customers with know-how acquired over 45 years in the business, in order to assist them in the selection of the sharpening machine for circular saws best suited to meet their production needs.
In recent years, we have bet on the development of certain international markets in which we have invested to meet the needs of major manufacturing companies that, over time, have rewarded us by compensating for the decline in demand by certain European markets”.
What are Businaro’s overall main strengths?
Excellent Service
“Thanks to the experience and know-how gained by Businaro in 45 years of business, we are able to provide pre- and post-sales services highly appreciated by our customers. Over time, our customers have actually saved time and money by relying on us for advice on how to resolve their sharpening operation issues and choices.
Research and Innovation
Over time, our constant search for new solutions and collaboration with highly specialized resources such as university researchers has enabled us to design innovative solutions.
Our approach is exemplified by the design and construction of our new industrial sharpening machine for circular saws with a patented system unique in the world, which transforms circular motion axes into linear ones, with the advantages that we talked about previously.
Innovation is Businaro’s business, even the design of our machine’s touch-screen programming system revolutionizes the field.
Reliability
The other distinctive feature that characterizes Businaro’s sharpening machines for industrial circular saws is their great reliability, even under highly stressful working conditions.
Top-quality components combined with an extraordinary ability to imagine futuristic technical/technological scenarios determine the superior performance of Businaro’s machines.
Our references in different segments of the market confirm the reliability of our machines. Just to mention a few, we have references from companies such as Toyota, Fiat, Mercedes, Velcro, Millinproducts, Aytools, 3M, and so on.
Businaro serves both distributors and manufacturing companies (major steel mills, pipe manufacturers, manufacturers of circular saws, etc.) especially worldwide. Our export turnover is in fact approximately 95% of total sales.