Automated Orbital Wrapper Eliminates Pallet-Wrapping Bottleneck

Metal fabricator Penn Sheet Metal, Allentown, PA, a provider of precision cutting and fabrication services of perimeter, interior and miscellaneous parts for gutter, roof and wall-panel systems used in construction, has reduced the time required to stretch-wrap its pallet loads from an average of 15 min. per load to 1 min. or less by replacing manual stretch wrapping with an automated orbital-wrapping machine from TAB Industries. Releasing a bottleneck in the packaging department that threatened the company's stellar lead times, the TAB Wrapper Tornado automatically wraps stretch wrap 360 deg. around and under the pallet and load while it is raised on a forklift, creating a secure, unitized load without banding or boxes. The orbital wrapper safely encases the full length of the fabricator's custom 10- and 16-ft.-long pallets required for many of the elongated metal parts it fabricates.

Speeding production while reducing the number of workers involved in the wrapping process down from two or three to just one worker, the orbital wrapper saves an average of 2.5 hr./day, or more than 78 full, 8-hr. workday/yr., according to Mike Roeder, president of Penn Sheet Metal.

“We were wasting so much time wrapping pallets by hand until I'd finally had enough,” says Roeder. “Now we're getting a much better, more secure wrap every time, even on our longest skids and it wouldn't even be possible to wrap them by hand—I just love this machine!”

See also: TAB Industries LLC

Technologies: Finishing

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