Gearfox/CIMA Visit

Guys,

I was recently in Italy for other business, and was in the neighborhood of Gearfox/CIMA.

I went into meet Wanni, and here is my report.

FYI, not to show preference over others, I met Chris Melia several times over the past 6 months. I think he is sufficiently well known by most readers of the website.

Visit Report

Company: CIMA and Gearfox / Foxmatic Date: 27 June 2007

Contacts: Wanni Albertini – CEO of Gearfox, Fabrizio Sasdelli – MD Cima, Cleardo Giacometti – Area Sales Manager, Maurizio Bigi – Foxmatic and CEO of Automac

Objective: This contact came from the GT40S website. Cima/Gearfox designed and developed the transaxles used in the Koenigsegg and other low volume, high performance supercars (Pagani, Apollo, Ascari, Tramontana, etc).

Results: CIMA is part of the Coesia Group, employ 125 people. Coesia is an Italian group with businesses that include tobacco packaging and general machine tools. Coesia employs in total 4000 people. CIMA started life making gear making machines more then 20 years ago.

Today, CIMA supplies gear parts and transmissions with its own name, to KTM, Piaggio and other motor cycle builders. It further supplies gears to three F1 teams, Ferrari, BMW, and Toyota.

The firm also supplies parts to the Magna designed Ferrari F430 E-diff, to Hoerbiger regarding a BMW motorcycle clutch holder. The company is also aeronautical certified. One of their Northern European industrial customers has CIMA build a planetary gear reducer made to the customer’s design. CIMA did this at a cost lower than the OEM could make it internally. CIMA is also well tooled for the grinding of crankshafts for Scuderia Ferrari and MV Agusta

Of their own transaxle business, CIMA supply around 100 – 150 per annum, depending on which of their supercar makers are in business. Gearfox/CIMA/Foxmatic recently took the Chrysler M412 (? – This is a new mid-engined supercar concept shown at various autoshows around the world in 2004/5) business from Ricardo. The box is sequential shifted with a low level of automation. This permits a paddle shift while keeping manual clutch operation. Ricardo wanted €IOM for development and would supply 5 prototypes. CIMA/Foxmatic did not comment on their offer but it was obviously more competitive than Ricardo.

The company has a Berduel heat treatment centre, the only one outside of France. It was noted that all F1 teams use this system. The system is new, and said to be state of the art.

The firm’s philosophy is to work with high quality, small production runs, up to several thousand pieces (probably 20,000) per part per annum.

The relationship between CIMA and Gearfox is interesting. Gearfox does:
Design, development, product testing, applications engineering, and owns the intellectual property to the designs. Gearfox also has other arrangements with a mechatronics company called Automac. The products/systems produced in collaboration between the 2 companies are branded Foxmatic.

Automac designed the first Selespeed transmission for Fiat/Magneti Marelli installed in the Ferrari F355F1. They also designed the variable intake trumpets for Yamaha’s GP motorcycle. Right now Automac is designing an active suspension for a race motorcycle. The first tests were made early the previous week, and the bike was over 1 second faster than the lap record. A 600 Honda superbike was used for the installation. They told me no more than this.

The most interesting aspect of this triangulation is that they are capable to produce complete systems the best clutch for the application from: AP Racing, Sachs Race or Exedy.


 
Dom,
thanks a lot for your support in trying to explaine how companies are looking like.
Obviously this aspect is not of actuality, watching the replies.
This confirms why interested people are contacting me privatly and do not want to be disclosed on the forum.
Many thanks
Wanni
 
Interesting....

I took a ride in Julian's 355F1 Spyder recently and I have to say, I thought the paddle concept and operation was truly awesome... I have alway liked the tactile feel of a stick - even if sequential, but I was definately impressed with the smoothness and speed of shift, very nice....

Of course it was helped by that lovely howling V8 - something to do with the exhaust silencing (or lack of it:D ) - would sound great through the Dartford Tunnel..;)
 
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