Eco-friendly and performing

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Meccanotecnica Umbra produces low friction “Mecflon” mechanical seals and bushings for dishwasher pumps. To save energy and reduce CO2 emissions.

Along more than 55 years since foundation, Meccanotecnica Umbra has always operated with full responsibility toward its environment, workers and whole community in every country and site, implementing progressively an ethical code and management systems according to ISO 45000 standard for safety, ISO 14001 and EMAS II for environment, SA 8000 for social responsibility. The respect for the environment permeates all sectors of the company: Meccanotecnica Umbra (MTU) creates products that are more compatible with the environment both in the production phase, minimizing not only the impacts of the production site but also of the various machinery and processes, and in research and development of more performing products, from an environmental point of view, throughout the entire life cycle.

Meccanotecnica Umbra developed Mecflon, a specific material for sliding rings of the dishwashers, in order to reduce the sliding friction.

Birth and applications of Mecflon
Since the early 90s, the household appliances market had requested to reduce the asynchronous water pump motor power and to solve noise and sticking problems of the seal after long stop time. Meccanotecnica Umbra developed a specific material for sliding rings in order to reduce the sliding friction. The solution is the MTU PTFE material, with appropriate fillers: Mecflon. When compared to other grades of Polytetrafluoroethylene, Mecflon has been formulated to provide increased efficiency, improve wear resistance, and decrease starting torque and noise in demanding applications of food, spa, and drinkable water segments. Progressively applied on more than 200 million dishwasher pumps, meanwhile Mecflon had allowed a relevant saving of production costs for the manufacturers.

Compared to PTFE, Mecflon is formulated to provide increased efficiency, improved wear resistance, and decreased starting torque in demanding applications of food, spa, and drinkable water segments.

Also for the users it has allowed a sizeable saving of electricity costs – over 300 M kWh per year – with a reduction of more than 150,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year in the atmosphere. As one of main market trend in this segment is related to the use of brushless motors, MTU introduced also bushings and rings, made of the same innovative materials, to prevent against wear, sticking and noise, for the Tier1s and OEs that are partially replacing the traditional pumps equipped with mechanical seals. More recently MTU has also started a specific development program for application of PTFE bushing to cooling system water pump, taking into account the typical working conditions of the automotive segment (-40 / 140 °C, up to 6000 rpm, highly additivated coolant, continuous operation during in- house recharge of batteries of hybrid or electric vehicles).