LI-BE S.p.A. attend with success at the international machine tools exhibition EMO in Milan

The offer by LI-BE goes beyond the mere supply of high-tech solutions: it starts instead from the study of customers’ specific requirements to assure the full success of its applications.

Since 1984, LI-BE has produced special bearings, by dimension and execution, for different industrial applications. Founded as a family company, LI-BE now ranks in the typical small/medium Italian companies and develops its activities  (from design to production) in the facilities placed in the area of Oltrepo Pavese with a workforce of about 70 people. The geographic location of LI-BE (in the middle of the Po Valley, heart of the Italian economy) certainly offers more than one advantage: proximity to the main roads and cities and above all easy access to all the industrial resources offered by the mechanical engineering companies in the region (workshops for heat treatment, surface treatments, superfinishing etc.)

In the years, it has paid more and more attention both to internal organization and to technical improvements. LI-BE is certified ISO 9001 whose guidelines are strictly followed in daily activities and ISO 14001. At LI-BE, environmental consideration is an important part of business since our customers as well as by LI-BE Management require this commitment. During the last decades LI-BE has continuously implemented its product range which now includes bearings, rollers and complementary articles (slides and plates) used in the sector of internal goods handling, metallurgical machinery, painting machinery, power transmission units, rotating tables for tool machines, etc.

LI-BE has always been synonymous of special bearings and is the holder of some international patents. For this reason, the company employs team of experts who manage to provide solutions and projects suiting customers’ specific requirements.
The company activity has produced constant growth, enabling it to employ avant-garde production systems combined with modern control equipment that become necessary to carry out rigid and precise testing operations during each work cycle. All this has been possible thanks to the founders’ extensive experience brought to the company and to their creation of a highly-qualified work team who has always offered the greatest levels of flexibility in meeting the requirements of each client on a ‘made-to-measure’ basis. The continuous cooperation with company Meccanica Nova, which is well experienced manufacturer of grinding equipment, has led LI-BE to have a very advanced grinding workshop (the heart of our production department) equipped with high precision grinding machines. LI-BE boasts a strong presence in both national and international markets. It was initially best-known in the EU Countries and it has systematically developed its sales activities abroad, thus succeeding in exporting its products to five continents and creating a sales network consisting of agents and distributors in various countries all over the world. Technical expertise, flexibility and the desire to excel brought the company to compete and to deal with world sector leaders and to prove its technical and quality skills, resulting in its customers’ acknowledgement and fidelization. Notwithstanding its hard-won position as market leader and aware of the rugged competition existing in its industry, LI-BE has never neglected those niche markets that are open to those companies making flexibility, readiness, experience and reliability their strong points, as LI-BE does.

Precisely because of this, investments have always enjoyed an important role in the company’s management, with the main aim of bringing continuous improvement in the company’s operations as well as the integration of new types of articles that can widen its range of products further. From the time of its establishment, when the members created the first ‘core business’ of the company with the production of combined bearings for the logistics industry, the company has enjoyed various periods of investment enabling it to produce high precision and high-quality bearings for sheet metalworking and for painting, leading up to LI-BE’s commitment to produce products for the steel and tool machine industries. This goal has been pursued with the introduction of new control equipment giving the company the ability to produce bearings of diameters up to 1300 mm. It certainly was an important move that enabled the company to involve itself in new commercial activities and to enter markets hitherto unknown to LI-BE.

The installation and use of new software for engineers let the company offer a more and more precise support in research and design. New materials and surfaces treatments are adopted to guarantee better performances, but it is in the choice
of geometries that LI-BE, proud of its tradition of quality excellence, has made an important step. The technique of Finite Elements Analysis (FEA), based on Finite Method Elements (FEM), has been an important introduction that makes
accurate investigation on bearing working condition possible.

The company’s aim is the development of its own method of analysis, specialized in the study of the Hertzian contacts and adapted to the specific requirements of customers. During the early designing phases, they use software for virtual prototyping (Autodesk Inventor) and for simulation of contact conditions (MSC Marc). These devices offer a very reliable evaluation of the bearing even before the proper realization and reduce the necessity to carry out tests, while permitting to
heighten the limit of load capacities and of rotation speeds. Turning and working stations have been recently updated and aligned to the trend of computerizing and advanced simulation. This was enabled by the use of two specific software CAM (the first one is DelCAM dedicated to lathes and motorized lathes while the latter is Inventor HSM dedicated to the full range of milling and drilling operations). These software immediately guaranteed better quality in the operations, time saving a and reduced tool wear. Expertise and use of targeted simulation software make LI-BE carry on the plan of continuous R&D. LI-BE R&D efforts are mainly focused on the excellences represented by the products of the line named SEL (for machine tools) and by the customized back-up rolls that have been optimized for loading conditions over the standard levels. Hence showing LI-BE expertise and competence that were once prerogative of big companies only. 

The possibility to make real validation test offers our customers the assurance of reliable and immediately ready data for the designing of customers’ system. In addition to customized products and to technical support, LI-BE offers the service of reconditioning of the rollers used in the working of cold rolling steel plate.

LI-BE offers its own know-how “to give new life” to back-up rollers for levelers and rollers for Sendzimir mills, thus permitting customers to reduce maintenance costs by re-using the same products that have been brought again to the original starting quality and performance.

Novelties on Show

LI-BE will be present at EMO Milano 2015 and will exhibit the products of the series SEL dedicated to machine tools. Besides the standard bearings used as support of screw drives, you will find the new execution equipped with our innovative cage specifically designed for high-speed applications. You will see even the full range of SEL/Y, suitable for turning tables, tilting heads, measuring instruments and automation systems. The standard version (SEL/Y) will be shown together with the one for high rotation speeds (SEL/Y…AV). This version is characterized by high running precision, high rigidity at tilting moments and high carrying capacities. Thanks to its internal geometry, SEL/Y…AV can reach high rotational speed without any losses in terms of run-out or rigidity. The series will be completed by the version SEL/Y…IMD where the measuring rotation system AMOSIN is integrated into the bearing.

New projects are already ‘under construction’ and will see LI-BE involved in designs of suitable products for other  sectors as well as new versions of its current range. The company looks at the future with continuous and renewed optimism.
Being supported by its enthusiasm for the comforting results obtained in these years of activity, LI-BE believes to have strengths and capabilities to achieve ever more ambitious goals