OUR HISTORY
Trater was born, under another name, during the Sixties from the entrepreneurial spirit of the founding fathers Mr. Rino Grassi and Valerio Mariotti, for the manufacturing of steam generators.
Thanks to the variety of components to be treated coming from all sectors of the Italian and foreign plant constructions, the heat treatment branch of the company became rapidly, such as the manufacturing sector, a distinctive activity due to the technological innovation and the practical solutions adopted to reach the best result in terms of resistance of the welds subject to efforts and fatigue and in terms of geometrical stability of the items, particularly researched by the manufacturing companies of machine tools.
In 1969, the heat treatment activity was definitely separated from the manufacturing one and on June 16th Trater was born.
In the Seventies, Trater grew rapidly up until it conquered all the spaces previously occupied by the steam generators’ manufacturing company, which became only engineering. Nowadays, Trater covers a surface of 30 thousand square meters and provides also services such as non-destructive examinations, abrasive blasting, industrial painting and flame spray.
In the Eighties, thanks to the contribution and the ideas of the son and daughter of the founding father, Vittorio and Patrizia Grassi, Trater started working more and more precious and performing materials, such as stainless steel, alloyed steels, aluminum alloys, copper and nickel alloys. Further to stress-relieving treatments and PWHT, Trater enters the world of quality treatments (annealing, normalizing and quenching and tempering) and solution annealing.
The first oven of the steam generators’ manufacturing company, which still exists and daily operates under the abbreviation "F1"(Forno 1, Oven 1) has been joined during the years by 12 other ovens, even bigger and more specialized, (up to 30 meters long, 7,5 wide, 6 meters high and with operating temperature up to 1200°C). Every day, thermal cycles are executed in accordance with the customers’ specifications, the welding qualifications of the items, the needs and the requirements of the material and the geometries under treatment.
In the Nineties, thanks to the offered quality, Trater became a reference company in the field of heat treatments of critical components for chemical and petrochemical plants and plants for the production and distribution of energy. Trater invented and created the treatment system of fixed-tubesheets heat exchangers, eliminating the problems of deformations of tube-sheets, due to the lack of temperature uniformity between the shell and tubes, and the successive problems of the items in service such as cracks on the welds between tube and tube-sheet and the negative phenomena connected to the stress corrosion cracking.
In 2000, Trater obtains the certification
TUV AD 2000 – Merkblatt W 0 / TRD 2100, HP 0.
With the entry of the third generation into the company staff, Engineers Gabriele and Andrea Grassi, and a team of materials, automation, energy and aerospace engineers, TRATER could take part to one of the most important scientific research projects of the recent years, such as the creation of the Large Binocular Telescope, the biggest steam generations in the world for the thermonuclear Plant of Palo Verde, the components for the European space project Ariane and for the Israel Space Agency, and has performed heat treatments on the test components for the superconductors of the ITER Project for the nuclear fusion. Nowadays titanium and zirconium are treated as well.
Since 2008 Vittorio Grassi has been cooperating with the “Istituto Italiano della Saldatura” (Italian Institution of the European Welding Federation) for Comprehensive Level courses on heat treatments on welded joints (EWF 628-08).
Eng. Gabriele Grassi is one of the first three qualified at the Istituto Italiano della Saldatura as “Personnel with the Responsibility for Heat Treatment of Welded Joints Doc. EWF 628-08”.
