Boosting Trailer Production

How EXA Trailers Mexico Scaled Operations with Davi MCB Technology

Story overview

EXA Trailers is a globally recognized brand known for its innovative designs and high-quality trailers. For over 35 years, EXA has designed and manufactured trailers for the domestic and international markets, adhering to the highest standards of material and design quality. EXA was the first trailer company to have its own research and development department for new products, where each unit's design is meticulously tested to ensure optimal quality in the final product.

Website

exaindustrial.com/

Location

Mexico

Industry

Tank Trailers

Eliminating the Assembly Bottleneck in Trailer Manufacturing

In trailer and tanker fabrication, the shell plates are long, relatively thin, and highly prone to deflection during the rolling process. EXA Trailers encountered several critical issues that limited their daily output:

The "Flat End" Problem: Traditional rolling machines leave long unbent flat sections at the leading and trailing edges of the plate. Removing or correcting these flat ends required time-consuming pre-bending operations on separate press brakes, slowing down the entire assembly line.
Slippage and Material Misalignment: Standard friction-driven rolls often slip when handling large-format plates, leading to misaligned seams and costly rework during longitudinal welding.
Dependence on Highly Skilled Operators: Manual roll positioning and constant physical template checks meant that part quality varied from shift to shift, creating a bottleneck at the fit-up and welding stations.

To scale their operations, EXA Trailers needed a rolling solution that could handle high-speed, repeatable cycles, minimize flat ends, and integrate seamlessly into a semi-automated production workflow.

The Solution

The Davi MCB 4-Roll Plate Bending Machine

EXA Trailers partnered with Davi, selecting the Davi MCB 4-Roll plate bending machine—a technology engineered specifically for high productivity, repeatability, and ease of use.

The MCB system addressed EXA Trailers' production challenges through several proprietary technical innovations:

Planetary Guide Technology: Instead of linear vertical guides, the MCB’s side rolls move along a curved, pivoting planetary path. This geometry acts as a natural force multiplier, wrapping the plate tightly around the top roll to form ultra-tight diameters (down to 1.1 times the top roll diameter) and dramatically shortening the unbent flat end.
Permanent Clamping Control: In a 4-roll configuration, the bottom roll clamps the plate securely against the top roll immediately after feeding. This eliminates any risk of plate slippage, guaranteeing that the plate remains perfectly squared throughout the entire rolling cycle.
Patented Servo-Tronic Roll Parallelism: The rolls are kept parallel at all times by an integrated dual-control system. Pumping groups mechanically maintain equal pressure and oil mass flow to the cylinders at both ends of the machine, while high-response electro-valves perform real-time fine-tuning. This ensures consistent geometry even in the event of an electronic failure.
Smart Automation with iRoll Control: The machine features Davi’s advanced control console, allowing operators to generate optimized multi-pass programs automatically. The system compensates for material spring-back and variations in plate batches, reducing reliance on manual operator adjustments.

The Results

Minimized Flat Ends and Zero Rework

The combination of planetary guides and high clamping pressure allowed EXA Trailers to achieve the shortest possible flat ends. This eliminated the need for secondary pre-bending or edge-cutting, saving hours of labor per trailer.

Slashed Cycle Times

With the 4-roll system, the entire plate is pre-bent, rolled, and finished in a single continuous direction. This streamlined workflow reduced production cycle times by more than 30%, allowing them to feed the welding lines much faster.

Flawless Fit-up for Automatic Welding

Thanks to the Servo-Tronic parallelism, the rolled cylinders exhibit exceptional roundness and edge-to-edge alignment. Perfect cylinder geometry means the subsequent longitudinal and circumferential welding phases can be executed with automated welding systems, eliminating gap-filling errors and structural weak points.

Rapid Operator Onboarding

The intuitive, smartphone-like interface of the iRoll console shortened the learning curve for new operators, allowing EXA Trailers to run multiple shifts with consistent, high-quality output.

In the heavy-duty transport industry, manufacturing high-volume components like bulk material trailers, dry bulk tankers, and heavy-duty chassis requires an uncompromising balance of speed, structural integrity, and repeatability. Standard rolling methods often struggle to meet these demands, leading to bottlenecked assembly lines, material waste during pre-bending, and excessive manual correction.

This was the challenge faced by EXA Trailers Mexico, a leading manufacturer of specialized commercial trailers and owner of MCB. To maintain their competitive edge in international markets, they needed to dramatically accelerate their production of cylindrical and conical trailer bodies without sacrificing the strict geometric tolerances required for safe highway transport.

Tailored Engineering for Global B2B Leadership
Davi's partnership with EXA Trailers Mexico showcases our dedicated vertical expertise in the transportation and tank trailer sectors. With over 60 years of heavy industrial engineering heritage and a specialized R&D division, Davi designs plate rolling systems that solve specific production bottlenecks.

By manufacturing all machines in Italy under strict ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 standards, and supporting them with a global 24/5 remote and field service network, we ensure our clients maintain maximum operational continuity. For EXA Trailers, the MCB was not just a machine purchase, but a strategic investment that built a highly qualified, high-output production pipeline capable of meeting rigorous international standards.