CW Trending: Bucci Composites’ Andrea Bedeschi talks F1, cars, cranes and wheels

In this episode of CW Trending, Andrea Bedeschi, general manager of Bucci Composites (formerly Riba Composites) in Faenza, Italy, talks to CW’s Jeff Sloan about Bucci’s history as a composites fabricator of Formula 1 and automotive parts, carbon fiber crane boom structures and, very recently, a 22-inch carbon fiber wheel for the Bentley Bentayga SUV. Bucci has also been named a Top Shop in the CompositesWorld 2021 CW Top Shops benchmarking survey.

Transcript:

Jeff Sloan 

Hi, everyone and welcome to CW trending. My name is Jeff Sloan I'm editor in chief of composites world and with me today is Andrea Bedeschi. Correct?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yes.

Jeff Sloan

Andrea is general manager at Bucci composites in Faenza, Italy and hi Andrea and welcome to CW trending.

Andrea Bedeschi

Thank you very much Jeff. Nice to see you again.

Jeff Sloan

It's really good to see you. It's been a long time, huh?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, it’s been a very long time it's been a very difficult period, but I hope that it is past.

Jeff Sloan 

Yeah. So, let's start. Tell us a little bit about Bucci and where you're located exactly within Italy and what the history of the company is. Tell me a little bit about the kind of work that Bucci does.

Andrea Bedeschi (0:56)

Yeah, Bucci composite is located in Italy. The north of Italy is not too far from Bologna, we say the 50 kilometers north of Bologna. We started the company at the end of the 80s, 1988 is the date and the reason why we started this connected to the Formula One. So originally, we started as Formula One supplier because the person that was working at the Minardi team, Minardi was an old formula one team based in Faenza. That still in point does not mean its named Minardi anymore, but there this AlphaTauri and he decided in the 80s 1988 to start his own company to make spot for Formula One. So, we started as Formula One supplier parts for Minardi of course, but also in Ferrari in Italy. That is the Formula One team we have left in Italy. This is the starting point for us. Originally, the name was different. Our first name was Riba composite.

Jeff Sloan

I Remember that

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, after 20 years in 2020. So last year we changed the name to Bucci composite, because last year was the 20th anniversary of the acquisition of the Riba composites by the industrial group, Bucci industries. So, we were acquired by an investment group based here in Faenza. And last year we took the name of the group also for our Yeah, this was the starting point.

Jeff Sloan 

and it's Bucci. B-u-c-c-i for those who are looking it up.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yes, you are right.

Jeff Sloan

And so, the legacy is in Formula One parts and structures. I know you've also done a lot in automotive, for the Italian automotive industry, I think you have some parts there to show us as a demonstration.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yes, I will move the camera. I hope you do not move too much the camera just to show some part because as I told you we might with a formula one parts. That was the origin of the company making parts for Formula One, very complicated Parts, few numbers. But later on, we decided to move into the standard automotive sector, let me say road cars. Also, we are talking about super luxury cars. So, the numbers are bigger compared to formal one, but not they are not such a big land back in the standard automotive sector. And you can see some part here, this is a front hood for the Ferrari 3488 p star that is one of the parts we did last year. So, we move quickly from the models for Formula One to the automotive the standard road car. After a while that means we’ve seen that more market is coming from the road cars. Actually, today the company is bigger than in the past of course. We started with 10-15 people and nowadays we are 200-220 people working in the company. Eighty percent of the turnover is coming from the automotive. A small portion of this turnover is coming from The Formula One, so Formula One is in our parks in our DNA, let me say. But in this moment automotive for us is main brands for the road cars like we say the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Aston Martin, McLaren, Audi these are the names of the customers we are following in this market. Not only automotive, because we decided also to diversify a little bit the business just to keep the feet in several, in several, in more than one food. If it is possible, so, we started making parts for the aerospace, we are making parts for helicopters. IT is not a nice period to talk about aerospace in this use, but to ignore coming from the aerospace is not so big 5% of the total number of companies coming from the aerospace. We would like to keep the aerospace as a potential growing sector for us because it's important to diversify as much as possible the business and is also important because it can do some cross fertilization. looking what they are doing in another business and carry over some ideas for the other sectors. So, I told you 80% automotive 5% aerospace 5% marine industry, we are doing parts for the marine industry. You can split the marine industry into two parts sailing boats and motorboats. Motorboats are close to the automotive. Sailing boats are more specialized like the formula one and is 5% of the turnover. The other one the other 5-10% is different business. One peculiar, strange let me say sector is the building and construction sector. I can show you our portion of the products that we are manufacturing for a customer. I don't know if you can see on the machine is the orange one, the orange arm you can see on the wall. Basically, that is a concrete pumping truck. So, it is a big arm, foldable arm that are on a track to pump the concrete on top of bridge or roofs or what else and here you can see a portion of the of the arm. That one you can see here on that is on the floor. It's very thick. And very big. It's just a portion is one section of the of the arm, specifically that one you can see on the on the floor is with a length of 10 meters long and 35-40 millimeter thick, very thick wall laminate hollow arm. And I can say we are the only one company manufacturing this kind of equipment for an Italian customer, that let me say honestly is not anymore in your current customer. The main the main company is a Chinese company.

Jeff Sloan 

And we did a story about that arm.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, and I remember you did our story on your magazine. Nice story. So maybe you can remember that we started with several level high alarms starting from the smaller one that is 10 meters or two pieces 10 meters still a big boom of 100 meters have several sections but when you open all the sections you reach 100 meters of length 50 less length are in carbon fiber, and 50 remain of course in steel due to the cost of the of the booms. It's a nice let me say, it's a well very well managed from the marketing of the customer because they you know when you try to make something with carbon fiber, the biggest problem is that some time a lot of people try to just make it in carbon. Without understanding exactly. Or it seems that they would like to do something cheaper. But I think it's the wrong, the wrong direction. In that case, the customer was doing a very deep market analysis trying to understand, which are the advantages in using the carbon fiber by doing the boons in carbon, not just of course, reducing the cost because it's not the case, but to reduce the tilting movement, so the truck is more stable, but also there is some regulation on the impassibility to go on the roads with a certain load on the wheels, and if you can reduce the load, you can have longer boom. So, with this machine you can move without the needs of any permission or less permission to go on the road, they can get an advantage. Also, this there is also another specific application for this boom, when you have the booms connected on the truck with the drum, you know, there is the track with the drums with the concrete inside?

Jeff Sloan

 Yeah, the cement truck

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, at the bottom of this truck there is also a smaller boom, yeah, they can reach like 20-25 meters, but by doing in carbon fiber, this boom, they can reduce the weight of the truck, and so they can load more cement in the drum. And so, this payload is exactly what is happening in the aircraft. So, you can put more cement so the people can get more money for each travel they need, so it's so nice, nice story, it's nice application.

Jeff Sloan 

And you, I see you have another structure behind you there. Can you tell us about that?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, I have also another automotive part here, probably in US is very well known. It is an Italian company. The name of this company is the diary. Dallara is very famous, especially in the US. But by doing the frames is just for the various formulas you have in the Indy cars and whatever and the Dallara is doing a lot of formulas in the US. But Gian Dallara is a very good, nice guy. He said I would like to have a road car before the end of the day and so he decided to build a road car also branded the Dallara and this is the seats interior seats made in carbon visible aspects of the Dallara car. I don't know if you know the this name of car the last time they decided to build 700 pieces of this car and we are the main supplier of the carbon fiber parts for the car.

Jeff Sloan 

And how do you fabricate that part?

Andera Bedeshci

This one because of the numbers are autoclave. They are manufacturing this chassis for this car, we are doing all the rest of the car that means, bonnet, all the body panels, all the interior, all the other parts. Those parts are manufactured by our autoclave process. Everything about process you know it's important because nowadays we started all the all the company started with autoclave process, right. But now is time to change for some obligation.

Jeff Sloan

Yeah, so I see over your left shoulder there is the most recent part you developed for Bentley So can you tell us about that? This is something that made the news a few weeks ago.

Andrea Bedeschi

yeah, this is I think one of the most important projects we developed is a carbon fiber wheel. You can see here the wheel I can try to get closer, but I don't know if you can see that. Yeah, yes, it's a 22-inch wheel so it's very big. For America or American size, it is a normal wheel, but for a European is very big wheel. 22 inches, I think, it's the biggest carbon fiber wheel on the market or will be on the market very soon. Bentley, we manufacture this wheel for Bentley, so 6-5 years ago, we started the project. So, it's very long time. But if you if you study the story of the carbon fiber wheels, you discover that each of us that try to make the wheels, they took our tapes 5, 6, 7 years to reach the target.

Jeff Sloan 

Why is that, Andrea? Because I remember you and I, at JEC years ago talking about your work on the wheel. So why does it take so long? What's the challenge?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, the problem is the beginning, you need to do a very strong analysis, technical analysis on the material specification, material selection, resin time, process time, and this is taking a long time to be done. It's something let me say still a new product, very structural, and risky product, that means you need to be very clear on what you're doing. There are a lot of things that you need to select. And this is taking a lot of time. Another long process is the testing phase, the testing phase, we started to develop the product, there was no regulation on how to test a nonmetallic wheel. There is no regulation, no one's know how to test a nonmetallic wheel. And the protocol in Europe was released just last year at the end of 2019 by the TÜV SÜD institute in Germany, they together with the OEMs. They studied the ways to test a nonmetallic wheel. I discovered that also in US starting from the beginning of this year, you have protocol to test a nonmetallic wheel also. Since the regulation is moving also to take out this new type of wheel. So, it's a long process.

Jeff Sloan 

Tell us tell us about the materials and process used to make this wheel.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah. As soon as we started the project, and the first thing you need to think about is how many wheels I would like to manufacture. Because of course, you can also do wheels in and out of lathe, if you want to spend a lot of time in manufacturing the wheel, you can select the way to make it in and out of lathe. But it was not the case. So, the process we selected to use to be used for the manufacture of the wheel was the high-pressure RPM, the geometry is very complex, you cannot just press because the geometry is not giving you the disability to just press the wheel. The other way is in fusion you need to build up the structure and then to infiltrate. That seems easy, but it's not because the geometry is very complicated. The material is the actual material we try to use the more standard materials is an aerospace grade material, let me say is a 12k material, but is not very high high-performance material because otherwise the costs will be too high. The rain is another you cannot say issue but it's important because you know one aspect that is strategic for the wheel is the temperature because in these cars you have the karma ceramic disc, brake disc. Ceramic brake disc can reach 900 degrees centigrade, very high temperature it means that you have at a distance of two centimeter from the interior part of the wheel something like a piece of carbon and ceramic pads reaching 800 to 900 degrees centigrade. So, as you may know, the resin systems cannot afford more than 200 to 210 degrees centigrade something like that. It’s a balance because is if you need to have a resin that needs to be infused or you if you would like to have a resin that is very clear, you cannot reach too much tg that means the transition and so the temperature does not rely. So, it's a game, it’s a challenge to find the right resin system. And so, we made a lot of tasks to select the right one that is not enough to support the temperature inside of the wheel. So, you need to protect also. So, we have some layers special material with special material to resist and special resin systems in the interior spa for Britain and then you can also ceramic coating to the best performance on the wheel.

Jeff Sloan 

So, the resin inside must be is at a high temperature resin then?

Andrea Bedeschi

on the on the last layer interiors, you have a high tg temperature resin system, because in that case, the color of the resin is not visible to match. Otherwise, you can see that these yellowing an easy way. But for special cars like the Bentley, we decided also to have a ceramic coating over these layers of material with the ITG resin system. Just to keep the things as much safe as possible, right.

Jeff Sloane 

So, tell us about other spokes fabricated separate from the rim and you put them together you bombed them, but how did they come together? How does it work?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, you build the thing separate, you have the rain rink, and then you have the spokes and your spokes, the spokes cannot say just bonded, but overlapping. They have overlaps inside and under the ring. To give connect than the resin is bonding the system together. If they you look a little bit at the insert, that means you can see here there's a metallic and aluminum insert in the wheel. So, the way to face the wheel on the hub, is exactly the same of the aluminum wheel. So, when I'm fixed the bolt on the wheel, I'm fixing the ball on an aluminum part. This was coming from the customer, originally the first customer we met, and that he decides not to go on with the project. They said we will never use a wheel, well fix the ball squeezing the carbon fiber. Yeah, because doing by doing this, you can lose the torque of the bolt. And this is unsafe. And so, this is driving guys to get to select a different solution for the simple problem. And we'll have a new thing we learn. Because we learn how to manage the high pressure rtm, we'll learn how to manage the preforming activity, with design and by ourselves, and the wheel. We had to follow all the rules for testing the wheel, including one that was not possible to be tested. 1 step of a passing procedure was defined in on the paper. But the testing equipment was not present at the testing Institute. And so, we were stopped. Because they were not there. And so, but at the end, we decided together with the Technical Institute to build on by yourself the equipment and to give them the equipment to test the wheel.

Jeff Sloan 

I have two questions for you. So, this wheel has 10 spokes. And I know the number of spokes and a carbon wheel matters, or at least it's a big part of the calculation. Was this driven by the customer or was this a decision that you made?

Andrea Bedeschi

So let me see core engineering. It was done together. I remember specifically the meetings we had at the beginning together with a customer, but Bentley. We were struggling on the spoke styles because the spoke styles, especially number of spokes, and also the geometry of the sport, but something that the audience wants to, to drive because the identity of the car. And so, we were traveling all the day try to understand because we fight to have more spoke as possible. And then and but also the geometry was important not to say too thin, not too big. So I remember a person at Bentley that at the end, he was flipping the screen of the of the laptop and said that one will be the design, and it was this one. That's, you know, the number of spoke, it's important from a technical point of view, you can reduce also the number of assaults, it depends also, by loads you have on the wheel. So, this is for an SUV, you know, the Benteyga is a giant car loads you have on the car on the wheels are very big. And there is a test on the wheels, that is the vertical impact. The vertical impact is the test that you are doing hitting the wheel in between the spokes, and also on the spokes. But when you hit between spokes, you can imagine that the wider is the window. Difficulty is the way to pass tests, especially once you have is very, very high.

Jeff Sloan

So, we have we have some videos showing that test. And we can well include that with this.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, that it's incredible. When you see the test and you said that’s incredible. That's why we selected the geometry. So, the customer and together with the customer, we will discuss a little bit, which is what's the best solution for the first wheel.

Jeff Sloan 

Yeah. so, you and I have talked over the years about your desire to build a carbon fiber wheel that is cost competitive with high production metallic wheels. And I'm wondering is that do you see that, is that ever I can imagine that this wheel for Bentley must have it must be expensive. Relative relatively expensive. But do you is that day coming? Do you still see a point where we could develop a carbon fiber wheel that is cost competitive with metallic wheels?

Andrea Bedeschi

If you want to know the reality I, have the real answer for the moment is impossible. For the moment it is impossible. Of course, you have some aluminum wheels that are costing a lot. But this one, the carbon fiber wheel, it's costing let me say if you are good enough, two times the cost of the aluminum wheel or at least if you're very, very good. The cost is very high for the material you are using. And also, still the process that's half the cost.

Jeff Sloan 

There are a lot of benefits, obviously weight and if you reduce weight the wheels you can reduce weight and other parts. I don't know if he's more durable, but still to 2x. It's probably a hard bargain to drive.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, if you if we think that the electrification of the vehicles so if we will not have any more for example, brake disc, right? You save a lot of cost in doing the protection the thermal protection for example, right because you don't have to break because that the energy of the breaking is captured by the model the engine so you can save costs you can think to save costs. But honestly, it's very difficult to think to have a wheel at the same cost of the aluminum. For a long time, I think this product will say and as a niche product. We have several requests, some requests coming from some customers that they would like to develop the wheel. Some Crazy people are asking for incredible prices. But you know, the numbers for the moment are you know, there is a company that is manufacturing and selling a carbon fiber since 10-15 years, they are manufacturing and selling something like 10,000 wheels. So, they are a good company. But these are the numbers for the moment. These are the numbers. So, we need to be concrete and real. For the moment, we'll say, as a niche market, we hope to enlarge the possibility to use these wheels maybe for other applications. But for the moment something for a niche market.

Jeff Sloan 

Okay. Well, before we wrap up, I just wanted to get your thoughts on what the future looks like for Bucci. I know, you know, Italy had a very difficult time during the initial COVID wave. I think things are better for you now a little bit. Obviously, you've been very busy with this wheel. And so how do you know what is the future look like for you? And for Bucci?

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, you know, you're right, we started in a very bad way. In Italy, we had a lot of problems. But now it seems this situation is going better and better. We all crossed out fingers waiting for September. Business wise, last year was not so terrible for us in terms of turnover. Let me say that the automotive was affected but the high end automotive is a little bit less effected. The companies stopped a little bit the operation. But if you were working on existing project, you continue to make turnover. So, this was the explanation why we didn't stop or decrease too much the turnover last year, what you have as a potential risk on this year was the stop of the problems. So do to do COVID, they stop the development a little bit. And if you probably develop in a sector, when you start a new project, it takes 6-12 month to do turnover. So, part of the of the problems is still on this year of 2021. But what we seen is starting from March of this year, the OEM start again to develop. So, we have a lot of work to do. We got some business, and we are making a lot of quotation. I'm talking about automotive because it's the more reactive sectors for the moment are very volatile. And so, we seen a very shining a future in front of us now. Elysia will be transitioning paths next year will be a very good year. We are also doing additional investments. For us, we love a new price that is coming at the end of the year, we invested this year in the performing press systems, we got a big business with an important Italian customer. And for next year, or 2023, we are planning to make a bigger facility to have an additional 4000 square meter possible. That's very the bid is going in if we are looking at the future and it seems okay. Seems to be here.

Jeff Sloan 

Yeah. Okay, Andrea. Well, it's been great to talk to you. Good to see you. Again. I appreciate you showing us the wheel and the other parts that Bucci is making and I'm glad to hear that. You're optimistic about the future. That's good news.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, it seems that the things are going to be better and better over time. So, for us, the future is okay. seems okay. So, we are smiling for the moment.

Jeff Sloan 

All right. Well, it's good to see Andrea, I appreciate you being on joining me here on CW trending. I have a good day and I hope to see you in person soon.

Andrea Bedeschi

Yeah, thank you very much and see you soon here in Italy, maybe. Okay.

Jeff Sloan

Okay. Bye

Andrea Bedeschi

bye.