The Cologna Veneta facility manufactures the entire range of Prima Power servo-electric bending solutions, covering all levels of automation and integration from stand-alone press brakes to robotic bending cells and fully automatic panel benders, “all of which can be integrated into flexible production lines,” Gecchele shared.

Another investment highlighted: Prima Power’s 2024 acquisition of Sistec AM, a specialist in the design and manufacture of robotic and custom-automation systems, bringing that capacity inhouse at Prima Power. This drives home the company’s mission to sell systems that combine multiple machines connected by automation.

“For example, some 90% of our Express Bender panel benders are integrated into automated production lines,” explained Gecchele. He also shared that 40% of the panel benders are sold into North America, with that percentage rising year over year.

Bending product manager Luca Spadina then showed us the unit’s latest development: an automated press brake cell featuring the firm’s smallest press brake paired with a six-axis robot and a flexible manufacturing system for sheet storage. Promoted as being ideal for compact spaces and offering plug-and-play quick setup, the Express Robot Cell made its debut at the 2025 Blechexpo in Stuttgart, Germany, held at the end of October.

Also new from Prima Power’s bending unit and spied during our factory tour: the eP Genius Duo, an integrated production line that features two press brakes: a low-tonnage Prima Power servo-electric eP-1030 designed for bending thin sheet, and a higher-power Gasparini hydraulic press brake for bending thicker material. The two press brakes share an automatic tool-holder shuttle with 32 m of tool-storage capacity. 

Evolve by Integration

Next, our group trained over to Turin, Italy, where Prima Power has its headquarters and R&D center in nearby Collegno. Our visit coincided with the firm’s annual customer event, Tech Flow 2025, with the tagline “Evolve by Integration.” Welcoming our group, along with customer representatives from all over Europe: chief marketing officer and head of robotics Enrico Garino.

“New players in renewable electricity are driving demand for balancing capacity, switchgear stations and substations to ensure reliable and flexible power delivery to various end users,” Garino shared. “The same is true for all of the systems needed to manufacture data centers, and sheet metal manufacturers play an important role in these rapidly growing fields.

“For sheet metal fabricators to remain competitive,” Garino added, “they must evolve beyond relying solely on stand-alone machines and instead build flexible, scalable and data-driven systems that can adapt instantly to changing market conditions.”

Tech Flow presentations included detailed case studies of recently installed sheet metal-fabrication lines—integrated, connected machines—custom-designed to manufacture electrical cabinets, HVAC systems, steel furniture and more. The hot market and topic of conversation: fabrication for the data-center and power-infrastructure markets. In fact, many event attendees were laser-focused on those exact markets. 

Describing one recent integrated-system project completed by the company for a customer to meet demand for the data-center market, were Antti Kuusisaari, Prima Power vice president of systems sales, and system sales manager Juha Salmenkangas. Kuusisaari described some of its customer’s goals at the onset of the project:

• Single-sheet loading with fast loading times for mixed production
• Minimal to no skeleton, to minimize material waste
• Part traceability with laser marking, for paperless production
• Flexible automation for kit production
• Automating bending.

The solution provided, Salmenkangas explained, includes the Prima Power Night Train intelligent warehouse and logistics center, a flexible manufacturing system that manages work in process as well as raw material. The 48-m-long Night Train, in this case, houses nine shelving units, 150 cassettes (or individual storage units) and can store as much as 600 tons of material. 

Starring along the production line is a Prima Power Shear Brilliance, its top-of-the-line punch-shear combination machine delivering hit speeds to 1300 hits/min and 33 tons of force. Maximum sheet size is 4300 by 1565 mm. It’s tended by a PSR1540 pick-and-stack robot, Salmenkangas explained, with the ability to run production 24/7. And, to accomplish the goal of automated bending, parts from the punch-shear route to a Prima Power EBe 3820 Express servo-electric panel bender. Salmenkangas highlighted some of its unique features:

• Heavy-duty tools and blades for bending thicker materials
• ASP—Additional Short Blades for internal and partial bends
• API—Advanced Profile Inspection for measuring bend angle in real time
• LBN—Last Bend Negative to enable automated part unloading
• BTD—Bend Turning Device so that the part can be flipped 180 deg.
• DNP—Device for Narrow Parts, a special manipulator for bending narrow parts.

Software At the Heart

Last but not least, Salmenkangas called attention to the software packages that lie at the heart of the success of the integrated manufacturing line—and in fact nearly every line like it. That is Prima Power’s Tulus production-management software suite, and its NC Express scalable CAD/CAM application. 

Tulus suite offerings include:

• Tulus Office, for work planning, monitoring machine status and the task list, and for managing machine capacity
• Tulus Cell, a machine-user interface that controls machine operation, tooling, the order of processing steps and sorting of finished arts
• Tulus Analytics, an online self-service portal that provides users with detailed information about their production and machine performance.

Other case studies presented were equally impressive, one highlighting a fabricator making switch-gear cabinets. By automating punching, cutting, bending, and part sorting and stacking using Prima Power equipment, including a Night Train logistics center with 110 sheet- and part-storage locations, the fabricator now can produce 400 cabinets/mo. Included on its integrated production line are machines for punching, shearing and bending, as well as an 8-kW Platino Linear flat-sheet laser cutting machine.

The Big Technology Reveal

… during our time in Turin: Prima Power’s new 3D laser cutting machine dubbed Giga Laser Next, boasting four synchronized robotic laser cutting heads. It primarily was developed to optimize productivity while minimizing floor space when trimming and cutting holes in hot-stamped automotive parts. Compared to a stand-alone single-head 3D laser cutting machine, Prima Power officials expect the Giga Laser Next—also slated to debut during Blechexpo—to enable its customers to generate one-piece flow and unmanned automation to nearly triple their productivity. 

We saw the Giga Laser Next run through its paces on the 11,000-sq.-m production floor trimming hot-stamped automotive door rings. Impressive is the cell design—a 10 by 10-m enclosure with laser sources, chillers and electrical panels all located on a rooftop mezzanine. Cutting heads are fixed to retractable arms that work in overlapping areas with advanced anti-collision control, allowing the heads to operate as close as 40 mm apart. 

Three of the systems were in various stages of production during our visit, nearly ready for shipping to customers.

Customer Site Visit: Refrigeration Specialist Epta Group

A customer visit came next—a “model user,” we were told, of Prima Power connected production lines anchored by a Night Train flexible manufacturing system. We travelled to the Italian city of Casale Monferrato to visit the Iarp manufacturing facility of global brand Epta Group. Epta specializes in commercial refrigeration for the retail, hotel-restaurant, and food-and-beverage markets—think ice-cream display cases, vending machines and the like, all critical products for modern on-the-go Italian cuisine.

The Casale Monferrato facility is one of 11 Epta global manufacturing sites, including three in Italy. The 36,000-sq-m plant houses one cutting line, five punch-shear combination machines and six press brakes, including brakes equipped with robotics, as well as four panel benders. The facility welcomed its first Prima Power machine, a mode EBe press brake, in 2019, along with a Night Train logistics center. That set the facility up for the addition, in 2021, of a punch-shear combination machine and its first panel bender.

The line we saw in action features a panel bender (an EBe servo-electric Express Bender) with a pick-and-stack robot, integrated with an SBe6 Shear Brilliance punch-shear combo. To optimize flexibility of the line, parts from the Shear Brilliance can either route automatically to the Express Bender for further processing or can be offloaded to the front of the machine where operators can move them to the press brake area, should they require additional forming.

The Night Train serving the line features 220 shelves; 70% of its capacity is used to store raw material, the rest being work in process/semi-finished parts from the Shear Brilliance awaiting bending. The Night Train also serves a second production line, added in 2022 and again integrating an SBe6 Shear Brilliance with an EBe Express Bender.

Also added in 2022: a robotic press brake cell, where parts from the newer punch-shear-bending line can be formed by press brake instead of the panel bender. The robotic cell allows continuous flow of parts not destined for the panel bender, without interrupting production, Together, the press brake cell and newer integrated line handle some 70% of the facility’s throughput.

Northbound for Finland

The second half of our trip took us to Seinäjoki, Finland, starting at Prima Power’s 20,000-sq.-m production facility and showroom. Opened in 2019, the Seinäjoki plant manufactures all Prima Power punch, punch/shear and punch/laser machines, as well as its automation equipment. It also includes a 1550-sq.-m showroom. As explained by president Jarmo Mursula, when the firm moved to the facility from its original location some 40 km away, production capacity was increased by 40%, we learned, thanks to a 30% increase in production space, as well as improved logistics and increased ceiling height. The building also boasts innovative “green” technologies including a heat-recovery system and solar panels.

While touring the showroom, I spoke with Kuusisaari regarding a noted trend when it comes to automating sheet-metal fabrication operations: the practice of design for automation. While much has been written about design for manufacturing, I needed to learn more about design for automation.

“When it comes to automating the bending operation using a panel bender,” Kuusisaari explained, “we work with customers to look for opportunities to combine parts that might be too small to fabricate on a panel bender into one larger blank. They then can keep those parts together through processing on a panel bender and then separate the parts from the blank later.

“In other cases, he added, “we’ll help customers redesign parts originally developed for bending on a press brake to enable them to be formed on a more productive panel bender.”

Software R&D

The Seinäjoki facility, in addition to machinery manufacturing, also houses the company’s software-development operations, which reportedly consumes some 50% of its overall R&D budget. The NC Express CAD/CAM software and Tulus suite of production modules lie at the center of its efforts to allow customers to manage workflow from quote to order to scheduling, and then through manufacturing.

Software was top of mind when we next visited a local customer, Steelcomp Oy, a fabricator in Kauhava, Finland, that serves the power-distribution and refrigeration markets. Our host, Daniel Tot-Egete, explained that of the firm’s 30 employees, 22 work in its 5000 sq. m of production space, managing the flow of some 3.5 million kg of sheet metal/yr. And, he added:

“We really appreciate the software integration through the process, integrating all of the machines. We have two combination shear-punching machines (a Shear Genius and the higher-speed Shear Brilliance), a Combi Genius laser-punch combination and a panel bender, along with Prima Power press brakes.

Managing material for all of this is a 50-m-long Night Train center, added in 2022, with room for 600 pallets of material. As seen in Italy, it stores raw material as well as work in process at Steelcomp—cut and punched sheet awaiting downstream bending.

“One thing we’ve noticed, in addition to improving material flow,” says Tot-Egete: “The Night Train has prevented a lot of the material damage we used to experience when moving material pallets by fork truck.”

Following Steelcomp’s installation of all of its Prima Power integrated, automated lines, the company’s founder, president and CEO Kimmo Niska eloquently summarized what we heard throughout our week-long adventure. Regarding the need for sheet metal fabricators to make bold moves in order to remain competitive, and following the Prima Power theme of Evolve by Integration, Niska said this:

“Steelcomp always has relied on bold moves in its operations, and that means investing in both technology and expansion. Today, automation is becoming a key success factor ... it is a crucial element in production efficiency, increases competitiveness in the market and also alleviates the challenges related to a bigger issue—the availability of skilled labor. Indeed, an important image factor comes into play, because automation increases the company’s attractiveness both for customers and for top production professionals.” MF

See also: Prima Power North America, Inc.

Technologies: Bending, CNC Punching, Cutting

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