Eliche Radice

https://www.elicheradice.it

Eliche Radice was founded at the beginning of the last century (in 1919) and the company is still owned today by the Radice family. It could be precisely this family formula, alongside a continual appraisal of the market, that has lead to the formation of a management structure that is capable of facing and managing today’s complex problems in a continuously evolving market with autonomy and dynamism. The company structure in Italy is developed over 50,000 m², of which 15,000 m² is covered, and is made up of around 85 employees. Added to this is a commercial base in France (ER France). The Eliche Radice foundry (600 tonnes annual capacity) it is the result of a continuous technological evolution, a perfect match between experience and research, the essential factors to achieve positive results. In 90 years of activity almost all the problems of propulsion in general, and more specifically those related to the propellers, have been faced and solved to the proven satisfaction of our customers from the most varied naval sectors.

The range of products which Eliche Radice is able to provide includes not only the propellers, but also the different components of the whole propulsion system starting from the gearbox coupling flange to the rudder. Traction or propulsive FPP, for manoeuvring systems, blades and hubs for CCP propellers, propeller shafts and relative brackets, seals, fixed or directional nozzles, hydro lubricated bearings and rudders. For the monoblock propellers the maximum diameter is 4 metres or 4 tons of weight, while for the propeller shafts the maximum length is 12 meters with 250 mms diameter. Standard products are normally available from stock while others are exclusively planned according to the customer’s specifications. The various production phases from modelling to the finished product are all carried out in house and this, besides simplifying the control phases, also allows a punctual delivery schedule. The whole production process at Eliche Radice is marked by the observance of two criteria: efficiency and quality; to this end important investments have been made such as the realization of some completely robotized production lines.

Every single propeller project is the result of years of meticulous direct experimentation carried out in cooperation with the principal research institutes and naval tanks from all over the world. This vast data archive is the basis of the calculation programs used for defining the parameters of each project and the production drawing. The planning department directly develops the calculation programs which, by examining all the possible alternatives, is able to offer the best possible solution in terms of number of blades, area disk (DAR) and pitch/ diameter (P/D) ratios always keeping in mind the criteria of efficiency, silence, vibrations and cavitation. The planning is not limited to the propellers only: it also includes design questions related to the various components of the shaft lines produced by Eliche Radice. New materials and technical solutions are constantly being tested so that we can always offer the most efficient solutions. In today’s planning 3D-CAD stations are used in order to facilitate the direct transfer of data to the CNC.