ITALY 08Other Italian Machine Tools

Large horizontal boring mills: Innocenti and PAMA

Large workpieces such as press frames, turbine casings, big gearbox housings and parts for ships and steelmaking machinery can neither be spun on a lathe nor placed on the table of an ordinary milling machine. They stay set on the floor or a large table, and the machine, with its horizontal spindle, is the one that moves to cut them. This is the horizontal boring mill. A slender boring spindle is nested inside a thick milling spindle, and the boring spindle extends forward to bore out deep holes. The spindle head moves up and down along the column, the column moves toward and away from the workpiece, and the table moves sideways. Its strength is that it can mill faces, drill holes and finish holes to precise position and diameter without resetting the workpiece.

Innocenti: a steel tube company builds large machines

The company that built these machines on a large scale in Italy was Innocenti, known for the Lambretta scooter. According to a British trade journal of 1958, the company began in 1933 as Fratelli Innocenti and grew from steel tube scaffolding and handrails to making the tubes themselves, and then to ironmaking and rolling equipment. Its Lambrate plant in Milano covered about 58 ha and employed about 4,000 people, of whom about 1,500 in the plant engineering division were building tube-making plant, rolling mills and large presses, along with large boring and milling machines made under license to the design of C. W. Berthiez of France at the same works^[6][7]. According to a US trade journal, Innocenti began mass-producing and selling these machines around 1950^[9].

The same British journal, in December 1958, described one of them, the FAP 140/95, in detail^[11]. The 140 and 95 in the model number are the diameters (mm) of the milling spindle and the boring spindle. All feeds used feed screws driven by infinitely variable electric motors, so that feeds could be varied without steps from a fine feed of about 0.6 mm/min to a rapid traverse of about 1.6 m/min, and the spindle too was varied steplessly from 6 to 1,000 rpm by a 25 hp DC motor. Positioning was by end measuring rods (length reference bars) actuating switches, with a claimed accuracy of 0.0004 in (about 0.01 mm). A feature peculiar to large machines was weight balancing. The spindle head that travels up and down the column weighs 2 to 8 t depending on the attachments fitted. So it was hung from a hydraulic ram behind the column, with the pump pressure adjusted to suit the attachment, and an accumulator held the pressure when the head was at rest. The column guideways also had a system that hydraulically compensated for the difference in load between the two sides, preventing uneven bearing on the guideways when the heavy spindle head was extended.

To Mitsubishi Shipbuilding in Japan, and on to NC

This machine also went to Japan. In November 1959, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering, which had signed a technical assistance agreement with Innocenti, began building Innocenti-CWB boring, milling and combination machines. Mitsubishi Shipbuilding planned to build floor-type, planer-type and other versions, and in September 1960 it exhibited an F 140/95 at the 2nd Coliseum machine tool show in Chicago^[9][12]. Numerical control soon came to large machines too. The index of a British trade journal for the second half of 1963 lists an article on an Innocenti-CWB horizontal boring mill fitted with the Modumatic No.650 NC control made by Coleman of the US^[19].

The Innocenti family gave up the company in 1972, and the state group IRI took over the machinery division as Innse Innocenti Sant'Eustacchio. Innse later passed, as a steelmaking equipment business, to Mannesmann Demag and then to SMS^[7]. The Innse plant in Milano faced closure in 2009; after workers stayed up on an overhead crane and drew national attention, Camozzi of Brescia bought it and restarted it^[51].

PAMA: the boring mills of Rovereto

Today's leading Italian maker of horizontal boring mills, headquartered in Rovereto in Trentino, is PAMA. It was founded in Verona in 1926 and moved to Rovereto in the 1980s^[5]. Besides horizontal boring mills it makes machining centers, including gantry types. In 1994, as one of the companies of the Mandelli group of Piacenza (FMS-Pama), it came under state extraordinary administration, and in 1996 the new Pama S.r.l. took over the business along with about 130 jobs^[44][48]. In November 2022 Japan's Nidec signed an agreement to buy the shares of PAMA and nine related companies. According to the announcement, PAMA had about 430 employees and 2021 sales of €118.3 million, and Nidec named strengthening its range of large machines and its 5-axis and multitasking technology as its aims^[3][4].

What changed on the shop floor. Every time a large workpiece is reset, alignment takes hours, and each resetting shifts the hole positions. By “keeping the workpiece still and moving the machine around it,” the horizontal boring mill finished faces, holes and tapping in a single setup. Balancing the weight of the spindle head and compensating loads on the guideways are still how large machines achieve their accuracy today.

⇶From special-purpose and transfer machines to FMS: Comau

When the same thing is made by the tens of thousands, such as car engine or scooter parts, it is faster to line up dedicated machining units for each operation and pass the workpiece along in turn than to cut one piece at a time on a general-purpose machine. Indexing the workpiece on a rotating table makes a rotary-table special-purpose machine; moving it along in a straight line makes a transfer machine.

A 1958 British trade journal described a special-purpose machine that Innocenti's machine tool division built for its own use. Seven single-spindle unit heads were arranged around a rotary table indexing to six positions, drilling seven holes in turn in pistons, including a 2 mm oil hole. Turning the table one station by hand tripped a microswitch, and each head was fed by a cam to drill its hole^[6]. Passing a part on to the next station and doing a fixed operation at each: the same idea as a transfer machine.

Comau: a consortium of companies building machines for Fiat

In 1973 several small Torino companies that supplied machines to the Fiat group came together to form the Consorzio Macchine Utensili (machine tool consortium). The name taken from its initials is Comau.^[29] The next year, 1974, as Comau Industriale, it filed an application for a control system for machines and plants^[32]. UNIDO's 1991 report calls the Fiat group's Comau “the largest machine tool company in Italy and in Europe,” and lists it in its table of the world's leading companies with machine tool sales of $380 million (1989) and 3,500 employees^[43].

Head changers: making the special-purpose idea flexible

Transfer machines are fast, but must be rebuilt when the part changes. What spread in the 1970s and 1980s in response was the FMS (flexible manufacturing system), which links NC machine tools and transport by computer. Comau's name appears again and again in the worldwide list of FMSs compiled by the US National Bureau of Standards in 1986: a tractor plant in Cheboksary in the USSR in 1978 (5,000 a year), Iveco gearbox cases in Brescia in 1982, Fiat wheel hubs in Torino in 1984 and more^[37]. The Iveco installation combined 10 machine tools with robots and automatic inspection, and was equipped with a head changer (a device that swaps the multi-spindle head itself). Multi-spindle heads that drill many holes at once are a tool of the transfer machine, but if the heads can be changed, a line can handle different parts while keeping mass-production speed. It was a device bridging special-purpose machines and FMS. Comau's history as a company and the spread of FMS are covered in Chapter 3.

What changed on the shop floor. In the era of special-purpose machines, a changeover meant “rebuilding the machine.” With FMS and head changers, it became “changing the program and the heads.” Today's machining center lines (identical machines in a row, fed by pallets) are an extension of this.

Coordinate measuring machines: DEA of Torino

To check the shape of large objects such as press dies and car body models, they used to be set on a large surface plate and measured point by point for height with a height gauge and scriber, with lines marked out. It took time, and the results depended on the skill of the person measuring.

The 1963 patent: push the probe and the machine follows

In Torino, DEA (Digital Electronic Automation) was founded in 1962 by Franco Sartorio and Giorgio Minucciani, engineers who had worked on analog computers at Fiat^[14]. In June 1963 the two filed an Italian application for a device that measures and marks out large workpieces in three coordinates. According to the West German patent gazette, it was meant for press dies and their models, large castings and forgings, ship and car body parts, car bodies themselves, aircraft windshields and more. An arm of adjustable height is moved electrically by slides on two axes, longitudinal and transverse, and a probe pointing down from the measuring and marking head at the end of the arm is touched against the workpiece to read three coordinates^[20][21].

The ingenuity lay in how the probe was moved. Pushed by hand, the slides would not stop where intended because of their weight and friction, and pushing the probe directly would deflect its support and cause errors. So the probe was supported on a cardan joint (a joint that tilts in two directions), and when the operator tilted the probe, two differential transformers (components that turn motion into electrical signals), set 90 degrees apart, read the tilt, and their signals drove the motors of the two horizontal axes. The operator only had to push lightly, and the machine followed the probe^[20]. In 1966 the company also applied for a device to keep dust from settling on precision guide rails, which shows clearly that a measuring machine's accuracy is decided by its guideways^[22]. In its applications of 1970–71, the company's address was Moncalieri, south of Torino^[26].

“We are the Japanese of measuring machines”

In June 1989 the Italian newspaper l'Unità featured DEA under the headline “In measuring machines (high tech), we are the Japanese.” According to the article, DEA was started in a warehouse in Torino's Borgo San Paolo by two engineers who were not satisfied with working for Fiat, and Minucciani, its founder and president, said, “We took our first machine to Germany to show it ourselves.” At the time, 800 of its roughly 1,000 people were engineers or graduates; 1988 sales were 115 billion lire, 80% of production was exported, and it held about 30% of world production of large, advanced measuring machines. While it built a 42 m long machine with a tolerance of 5 µm to measure airframes for Lockheed in the US, it was also trying to compete with Mitutoyo with its small Swift machine. The company was part of the state group IRI^[15]. In September 1994 DEA was sold by the state group Finmeccanica to Brown & Sharpe of the US and joined its metrology group^[46][47]. In December 2000 Sweden's Hexagon agreed to buy Brown & Sharpe's metrology business, DEA included^[50].

What changed on the shop floor. Marking out with a surface plate and height gauge gave way to “coordinate measurement” with a CMM. The article also says that practice was moving away from inspecting finished products at the end toward measuring partway along the line and feeding the results back to machining, so that no defects are produced^[15].

✶Laser machines: Prima and 3D lasers

In Torino, Prima began in spring 1977 as Prima Progetti. At first it was a company developing robots, electronics, measuring machines and automation^[33]. A 1986 Italian magazine article says it was a company that Franco Sartorio, one of DEA's founders, started in Moncalieri after leaving DEA, and that by then it was already part of the Prima Industrie group^[14].

The 1978 patent: cutting the edges of molded parts with a laser

What the company applied for in 1978 was an automatic laser cutting machine for car interior parts.^[38] Interior parts such as headliners are made by pressing a rigid or semi-rigid sheet in a die into a three-dimensional shape, then trimming the edges and punching out windows and holes. According to the US patent gazette, trimming the edges had until then also required dies, which were expensive and could not be changed once production had started. For small runs or the start-up of mass production there was no choice but to cut by hand, which was costly and gave uneven results. Prima's machine moves the table carrying the workpiece on one axis and the laser head on two linear and two rotary axes, cutting while pointing the head along the three-dimensional edge. The inventor was Franco Sartorio, whose name also appears on DEA's 1963 patent^[39][20].

In 1979 Prima installed its first laser cutting machine, for machining large three-dimensional pressed parts. At the end of the 1980s it handed its measuring machines to Finmeccanica and its robots to ABB to concentrate on lasers, and in the early 1990s it bought Laserwork of Switzerland and moved into two-dimensional machines for cutting flat sheet. In the mid-1990s it brought out 3D machines such as Optimo and Rapido^[33]. In October 1999 it listed on the Nuovo Mercato, Milano's stock market for growth companies^[49].

What changed on the shop floor. Trimming with dies may be fast in mass production, but the dies must be remade every time the shape changes. With a 5-axis laser, edges of a different shape can be cut just by changing the program. 3D laser processing changed how prototypes and small runs are made.

⌐Sheet metal machines: Salvagnini's panel bender

The basic machine for bending sheet metal is the press brake (bending press). It presses an upper die against a lower die to bend the sheet along a single line. The engineer Guido Salvagnini applied for a hydraulic control device for bending presses in 1961^[13], and in 1963 started a company in Milano making hydraulic machines for sheet metal work^[16].

The 1977 patent: bending by moving the sheet

The weak point of the press brake is the human hand. Putting the sheet into the press and positioning it, turning it for each new edge, flipping it over for a reverse bend, taking it out when done: the operator does it all. The more handwork, the slower the work and the more errors in dimensions and angles. The “machine for making rectangular sheet panels with bent edges” that Salvagnini Transferica applied for in September 1977 did away with this handwork^[35].

According to the US patent gazette, the machine consists of three parts. The first is a bending press with a C-shaped frame, with a lower bending counterblade, an upper sheet holder that moves up and down, and between them a pair of bending blades that move up and down. The second is an “iron hand,” a vise gripping the sheet mounted on a carriage; the carriage advances horizontally toward the press, and the lower jaw of the vise rotates about a vertical axis. The third is a position programmer. One edge of the sheet is inserted a set width between the counterblade and the holder, clamped by the holder, and bent by moving the bending blades up or down; the sheet is then repositioned for the next bend, and when one edge is done it is turned 90 or 180 degrees for the next edge, and so on, making upward and downward bends on all four edges without human hands. Applications listed include metal furniture, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and shelving^[36]. This machine was the beginning of the later P4.

The same invention was published in Britain and Japan in 1979^[35], and in the same year, 1979, Salvagnini also applied for an automatic punching machine, and in 1980 for a tool-change control for turret punches. These were preparations for linking the punching and bending machines so that sheet could flow through without passing through human hands^[40].

What changed on the shop floor. On a press brake, dies are changed to suit the size of the product and the direction of the bend, and people reposition the sheet. On a panel bender the bending blades bend both up and down and the machine turns the sheet, so panels for doors and boxes can be bent continuously without operators. It is the machine that changed the shape of sheet metal lines in plants making boxes for home appliances and switchboards.

Woodworking machines: SCM of Rimini and Biesse of Pesaro

Italy is also a major center of woodworking machinery. On the Adriatic side, Rimini and Pesaro have produced leading makers of woodworking machines that export worldwide.

SCM traces its origins back to 1935, when Nicola Gemmani and Lanfranco Aureli, both versed in casting and machining, began working together. In summer 1952 the first woodworking machine, “L'Invincibile,” was built in Rimini. It was designed by Nicola's son, the engineer Giuseppe Gemmani, to be simpler and easier to use than the machines of the day, and met the demand of the postwar building boom and for furniture. In 1976 the company built its first machining centers for solid wood and its first processing systems for wooden doors and windows. From the 1980s it brought in Morbidelli, maker of CNC machining centers for milling and drilling furniture panels, Gabbiani, maker of panel saws, Dmc for sanding and others, adding Routech for timber building components and Stefani for edge banding in 1992, and in 2002 CMS, maker of machines for plastics, composites, glass and stone. 2021 sales were €750 million, 90% of them exports^[8][10].

Biesse was founded in 1969^[23]. Patent records show that in 1972 it applied for a device for inserting and gluing wooden dowels into holes in furniture panels, and in 1974 and 1976 for improvements to multi-spindle drilling machines for wood and wood-based panels^[28][30][31]. Panels for knock-down furniture have many holes for shelf pins, hinges and connecting fittings at fixed spacing. The multi-spindle drilling machine, with many spindles in a row drilling dozens of holes in one stroke, works on the same idea as the multi-spindle drills of metalworking mass production, and it became the key to mass-producing furniture.

What changed on the shop floor. Woodworking machines run their spindles faster than metalworking machines and use lighter cutters, but the panels they handle are large and the number of holes and grooves is very high. The shift from multi-spindle drilling machines to CNC machining centers closely resembles the path from metalworking drilling machines to the MC.

Stone-working machines: Carrara's wire and Breton's engineered stone

From explosives to quarrying by “cutting with a line”

Carrara in Toscana has been a source of marble since ancient times. Explosives were once used to free stone from the mountain, but they shattered the stone and reduced the usable amount. A Milano science magazine wrote in 1923 that a big blast near Carrara, in which much of the stone shattered and scattered, was the deciding factor in giving up explosives^[2].

What spread instead was cutting stone with a helically twisted steel wire (filo elicoidale). The wire itself does not cut. A looped wire runs over pulleys while silica sand and water are fed into the cut; the wire drags the sand along and wears the stone away, and the groove deepens little by little. It is abrasive machining, like grinding or lapping. The problem was the first cut for getting the wire into the mountain rock: a large vertical shaft had to be dug to pass the wire through. In March 1898 Attilio Monticolo of Carrara was granted a patent for the penetrating pulley (puleggia penetrante), which made that shaft unnecessary^[1]. According to the 1923 article, the penetrating pulley was a steel disc 40–50 cm in diameter and 7–8 mm thick that held the wire in a groove around its rim and was pushed into the rock by a telescopic arm mounted on a tripod. It cut 10–15 cm an hour and could make cuts 15–20 m both long and deep. The article names Monticolo as the inventor of this method and stresses its great value in not wastefully breaking down the mountain^[2]. Today, machines that cut stone blocks with diamond-studded wire are used^[17].

Breton: from stone scraps to engineered stone slabs

Brevetti Toncelli (later Breton), started by Marcello Toncelli in 1963 at Castello di Godego in the province of Treviso, was a maker of machines for working natural stone. Working on marble for flooring, it created an industrial polishing process for stone slabs, which did not exist at the time, and then went on to new materials made by binding crushed stone with resin as well^[17][18]. In 1969 Toncelli applied for an apparatus for making blocks from crushed marble and polyester resin^[24][25], in 1977 for a method of making crushed-stone slabs with a resin binder, and for a method of pressing blocks of marble granules under vibration and vacuum in 1981^[34][42]. Packing the mix by shaking it while drawing out the air produces hard stone with few voids. This is the Bretonstone technology, and the company says it built its first plant for small quartz-and-resin slabs in 1982, the BB300 for large marble-and-resin blocks in 1984, and the BL300 for large quartz-and-resin slabs in 1986^[17]. The engineered quartz slabs widely used for kitchen countertops today descend from this. Breton now also makes machining centers for metals and composites^[17] (Chapter 5).

What changed on the shop floor. Stone cut out with wire saws has fewer cracks and comes in blocks of consistent size. With stone granules that used to be waste reborn as slabs through resin, vibration and vacuum, stoneworking became an industry not only of “cutting” but also of “binding and forming.”

Additive manufacturing: Prima Additive

In October 1980 Prima Progetti filed a patent application titled “Method for making three-dimensional elements by building up layers.” The inventors were Luigi Gilli and Franco Sartorio, whose name appears on the DEA and Prima patents^[41]. We have not yet been able to check its contents, so we cannot say whether it is the same thing as today's 3D printers.

Prima's metal additive manufacturing today is carried out by the company spun off from Prima Industrie's business in April 2022, Prima Additive. It makes machines of both kinds, powder bed fusion, which spreads powder and melts it with a laser, and directed energy deposition, which melts powder or wire as it is blown in to build up material, and sells them to aerospace, automotive, medical, energy and other industries. Sodick, the Japanese EDM maker, took a 9.5% stake through a capital and business alliance in 2024, and in May 2025 raised it to 94.35%, making Prima Additive a subsidiary^[52].

…Machines not covered in this chapter

Italy also has makers of drilling machines, broaching machines, EDM machines and metal-cutting saws, but this time we could not confirm their company histories in primary sources (patents, trade journals of the time, public records). We will add them to this chapter as they are confirmed. The history of these machines in America and Germany is gathered in Other American Machine Tools and Other German Machine Tools, and British boring machines and planers in Other British Machine Tools.

Links with Japan

Large boring mills. In November 1959 Mitsubishi Shipbuilding began building Innocenti-CWB boring, milling and combination machines under its technical assistance agreement with Innocenti, and the following year exhibited one at the Chicago show^[9][12]. More than 60 years later, in 2022, it was Japan's Nidec that signed an agreement to buy PAMA of Rovereto. Nidec had just entered machine tools in earnest, having brought Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool (today's Nidec Machine Tool) into its group the year before and OKK in 2022, and says PAMA's large boring mills fill out its range^[3]. The history of boring machines in Japan is in the timeline of Japanese Archive Chapter 5.

Measuring machines. The 1989 l'Unità article says that while DEA was among the world leaders in large, advanced measuring machines, it was being pushed hard by Japanese makers in small machines and would take on Mitutoyo with its new small Swift. The headline “we are the Japanese” shows well how Italy saw Japanese machine tools and measuring machines at the time^[15].

Sheet metal machines. Salvagnini's panel bender invention was also published in Japan as a patent application in July 1979^[35].

Additive manufacturing. Sodick started a metal 3D printer business in 2014, selling mainly in Japan for making cooling channels inside molds. It explains that making Prima Additive a subsidiary in 2025 is meant to expand into applications other than molds and into the European market^[52]. Sodick's history in EDM is in Japanese Archive Chapter 6.

FAQ

When did coordinate measuring machines begin in Italy?

In June 1963 Franco Sartorio and Giorgio Minucciani of DEA in Torino filed an Italian application for a device that measures and marks out large workpieces in three coordinates. When the probe was tilted, differential transformers read the tilt and motors made the machine follow the probe. In 1989 DEA was reported to hold about 30% of world production of large, advanced measuring machines.

How does a panel bender differ from a press brake?

A press brake bends the sheet along a single line with dies, and people position and reposition the sheet. In the panel bender Salvagnini applied for in 1977, the edge of the sheet, clamped by a holder, is bent by bending blades that move up and down, while an “iron hand” grips, feeds and turns the sheet, so upward and downward bends on all four edges can continue without human hands.

How was marble cut out of the mountains?

Explosives were once used, but they shattered the stone and wasted much of it, so they gave way to a method in which sand and water are fed onto a helically twisted steel wire that wears the stone away. In 1898 Attilio Monticolo of Carrara was granted a patent for a penetrating pulley that guides the wire into the rock. Today stone is cut with diamond-studded wire.

How are Italian large boring mills connected with Japan?

In 1959 Mitsubishi Shipbuilding began building Innocenti-CWB boring, milling and combination machines under a technical assistance agreement with Innocenti, and in 1960 exhibited one at a US trade show. In 2022 Japan's Nidec signed an agreement to buy PAMA of Rovereto.