A partnership with the University, Research inside the company

Ecor Research, thanks to the collaboration with the University of Modena, has decided to define a procedure for dollies characterization, which are also useful for future application materials.
The company has already collaborated with the academic world before, thanks to the increased attention given to research.

For these reasons, Ecor Research has asked the Engineering Department “Enzo Ferrari” the use of machinery and the sharing of experiences, creating the opportunity for an ad hoc dissertation on which I personally started to work.
Professor Massimo Messori offered me this opportunity, as a graduand student of the Master degree in Materials Engineering in Modena, where I moved to from my native land, Sicily.

The aim of my dissertation is the characterization of three different polyurethane dollies.
The first, used currently in production, worked as a reference; the second comes from China, and the third is unknown. The test to be performed varies from material to material and the type of information desired.
In this case, being a plastic material, I verified to which temperature is able to resist.
Moreover, I subjected it to a stress to simulate its use in a machine and, since it works in compression, I verified its behavior in these conditions.

The dissertation is divided into a first part of bibliographic research on polyurethanes in general and a second experimental part, aimed at knowing the specific characteristics of the samples.
The experimental part was carried out both in the laboratories of the University and in Ecor Rersearch laboratory in Ca ‘Sola, Modena.

The collaboration is still ongoing, but I have already achieved a remarkable collection of information through which I am sure it will soon be possible to reach my goal.
I am thrilled to be working to this dissertation, both for the interest of the project itself, and because it allows me to get closer to the business world by acquiring skills rarely taught in the classroom.

Chiara Sferrazza
Material Engineering Graduand

TO KNOW

The dolly is a polyurethane bar positioned in a machine for food packaging allowing a successful welding of a carton package.
In this way the package takes the requested square shape.

Characterization means the distribution of a set of test on a specific material in order to know its fundamental properties.