Machinery : Prussiani

Prussiani offers a range of sophisticated automatic bridge saws, five axes milling machines, waterjets, workcentres and lathes, and they all come with the Prussiani three-year warranty.

The two-headed Tango bridge saw it introduced at the Marmomacc stone exhibition in 2013 raised a few eyebrows. It can cut more than 70 slabs (280m2) of 30mm granite in an eight hour working day. Compare that with the 80m2 the five axes single bladed 5/TA can cut. And it is no slouch.

The Tango is basically a two-headed version the latest Champion 5 machines.

Both its heads rotate through 0-370° and both spindles can tilt through 0-90°. There is a vacuum lift manipulator on each head for positioning pieces to be cut and moving cut pieces out of the way of subsequent cuts.

The two cutting heads can move together in or out of synchronisation to perform two cutting operations simultaneously. The Tango really comes into its own for repetitive cutting operations, although it is no sluggard for one-offs.

It has an X axis stroke of 4,550mm, a Y axis stroke of 2,500mm and a 400mm Z axis stroke. It has a 26.4kW (36HP) spindle motor operating a blade up to 725mm at 8,000rpm.

The total length of the installed machine is 16.7m and it is 5.15m deep.

Options include manual tilting of disk-holder spindle through 0-90º, automatic tilting in two seconds through numerical control, tilting levers for the vertical loading of slabs, an electronic device for automatic measuring of the thickness of the slab to be cut, a digital camera prior to loading and a laser beam showing the cutting line mounted on each head.

As well as the two headed saw, Prussiani make two-headed waterjet cutters and two-headed CNC workcentres. And the latest development is the Cut & Jet bridge saw-cum-waterjet cutter.