Industry: construction materials and industrial building products manufacturing
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
Application: fully automatic end-of-line pallet wrapping
Technology: EDDA Spinner 2200 S Pallet fully automatic end-of-line packaging line
Introduction and project background
In Detroit, Michigan, the industrial heart of the United States, a global manufacturer of building materials and insulation technologies was facing a critical logistics bottleneck at the last stage of its production line. The plant produces heavy, large building material pallets in very high volumes.
Turntable, manual or semi-automatic wrapping systems could not keep up with the production speed, required intensive manual labour and, most importantly, could not guarantee that pallets weighing up to 3 tons would stay stable during long-distance transport. The company started looking for a fully automatic end-of-line pallet packaging system that runs without manual handling, meets the highest occupational safety standards and handles heavy industrial loads with ease.
EDDA Packaging designed, built and commissioned a tailored Spinner 2200 S Pallet line for the plant.
The challenges
- Very heavy and wide loads: pallets weigh up to 3 tons. Standard conveyors and packaging machines risked mechanical fatigue and breakdowns in continuous operation at this weight.
- Inconsistent packaging and damage risk: stretch film tension could not be standardised with manual wrapping, so pallets collapsed or products were damaged during overseas and intercity truck shipments.
- Logistics and labour bottlenecks: several forklift operators working constantly in the packaging area increased the risk of accidents and slowed down the end of the line.
- Lack of safety systems: the plant urgently needed an intelligent guarding system to make interaction between people and machines safe and fully compliant with strict safety regulations.
The solution: EDDA Spinner 2200 S technology
EDDA engineers installed a Spinner 2200 S horizontal orbital stretch wrapping line, integrated with heavy-duty conveyors developed specially for the Detroit plant. The main features of the system:
- 2200 mm ring diameter: the large ring opening wraps large pallets, industrial panels and building material blocks within these dimensions without difficulty.
- Heavy-duty conveyors for 3 tons: the roller conveyors at the infeed and outfeed are built for heavy industrial conditions and run smoothly, quietly and precisely under 3000 kg pallet loads.
- Smart flow control and buffer zone: the forklift operator simply leaves the pallet on the infeed conveyor. Sensors detect it and move it into the wrapping cell automatically. If the forklift is not ready when a wrapped pallet reaches the outfeed, the system creates a buffer zone and keeps pallets in an orderly queue, advancing the line as finished pallets are removed.
- Personnel safety: the line is equipped with safety fences, light curtains and emergency stop modules. If anyone approaches the wrapping cell without authorisation, the system stops within milliseconds.
Results and advantages
You can see the system at work in our video Fully Automatic Pallet Wrapping Line: The Ultimate Solution for Heavy Loads. After the investment, the Detroit plant achieved the following results:
- Secure loads: the controlled pre-stretch of the Spinner 2200 S locks the stretch film tightly onto the pallet, and problems such as loads falling apart or shifting in transit have been eliminated.
- Lower stretch film consumption: digital tension control delivers significant film savings compared with manual wrapping.
- No manual wrapping: the forklift operator only drops off and picks up the pallets. Wrapping, cutting, sealing and advancing the line are fully automatic.
- Continuous production flow: thanks to buffer zone management, packaging no longer causes downtime and production runs around the clock.
Conclusion
The EDDA Spinner 2200 S has shown, in one of the most demanding industrial sectors in the USA, that speed, safety and savings can go together in end-of-line packaging of heavy loads. For manufacturers of large, heavy and unstable products, this line is a key to operational excellence.
If you want to automate the end of your line, reduce labour costs and make your shipments safer, see the Spinner 2200 S Pallet product page or contact us at info@eddapack.com. Full operating cycles, live demonstrations and layout overviews of our heavy-duty packaging solutions are on our YouTube channel.