Just a quick heads up to let you know that if you’re in Barcelona this week (May 11th – 15th) you have a great opportunity to see a pallet inverter up close a the HISPACK show.
Premier Pallet Systems will be displaying a machine and talking people through the process on their agents stand C320.
If you visit remember to tell them you heard about it on the www.palletinverter.co.uk blog.
If you’re in Hertogenbosch Holland on the 1st or 2nd of April you might wish to take the oppotunity to check out the first Benelux event for environmentally friendly packaging. (Brabanthallen ’s- Hertogenbosch 09.00 a.m. – 05.00 p.m.) show. Organised by easyFairs® the show will attract a lot of interests and offers a great opportunity for you to pick up information on the latest pallet inverter and pallet stackers from the Halo Intra stand.
It true to say most people would not even know what a pallet inverter is or what it does. Even less so would people realise that the pallet inverter, a machine that only came into existence in it’s present form a little over thirty years ago, has actually grown to become a vital part of the manufacturing and distribution world. In truth it is fair to say the pallet inverter is turning the world upside down.
So what does a pallet inverter do? Well in many environments now there is the requirement for pallets to be removed from the bottom of a stack of goods. Actually as most goods are moved by pallet trucks these days nearly all items over a certain weight require a pallet under them to allow a forklift to push it’s forks beneath the load. These pallet either get broken in use and need replacing or else they are the wrong type for the environment and need swapping. (The chemical industry often uses plastic pallets rather than the more normal wooden pallets.)
This is where the pallet inverter comes in. It allows a load to have a new pallet put on top and then turns the load 180 degree so that the new pallet is at the base and ready to take the weight of the goods it is to carry. The old pallet is then removed and discarded or put to one side for later use on leaving the distribution center.
When you consider that a multi-million dollar industry have built up around this simple need to turn a load over and that many times if a pallet inverter fails production has to stop, it illustrates just how a straight forward and yet robust piece of machinery like a premier pallet inverter really has turned the world upside down.
Article By:
Frank L Garsome has been writing for many years. He has a particular interest in pallet inverters.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_L_Garsome
The concept of pallet inverter transfer has been around almost as long as pallets themselves.
The earliest pallet inverters were usually referred to as load tippers or tipplers and were invariably put together in local workshops. 180 degree inverter attachments on forklift trucks were also developed early on, with Cascade’s Turnaload being among the first commercially available pallet inverters on the market. Attempts were made to mount these attachments onto fixed ‘A’ frames with very mixed results.
The earliest applications were with agriculture-based industries such as chemical fertiliser and animal feeds. The turnaloads were used to invert stacks of bagged goods through180 degrees. This was to recover damaged sacks and to switch loads to customer pallets.
The first recognizable free-standing pallet inverters was developed in Norfolk in around 1976. It was built using the hydraulics salvaged from a dustcart! The concept proved very popular with ICI Fertilisers who bought at least 60 rotators for their distribution stores and factories throughout the country. The use of the machines cut their pallet losses enormously and helped to contain spillages in the warehouse. More soon
It soon became apparent that pallet inverters could handle loads other than bagged product. The next wave of users were in the general warehousing and distribution field transferring tinned goods from white to Chep rental pallets. The market continued to grow with all the early machines loading at a raised height by forklift truck.
Many coldstores were among the first companies to take up the idea. Broken or poor quality wood pallets present a significant danger if they are put away in the racking system. Frost on the steel racking has led to a number of serious accidents usually triggered by a damaged pallet.
The pallet inverters were sited off the edge of the loading dock so they could be accessed by the same powered pallet trucks which emptied the freezer trailers. Clearly a better solution would be a pallet changer which had a floor-level loading table. Hence the pallet retriever was designed to tip the load on its side and slide the load away by gravity enabling pallet exchange. Where the original pallet inverters were designed with a 2000 kgs capacity, the retriever was rarely required to handle over one tonne.
Not all loads reacted well to being rested on their side while the pallet was exchanged so the next aim was 180 degree inversion whilst still loading by pallet truck at floor-level. Therefore, the next advance was a floor-to-floor style inverter working on a principle rather similar to a see-saw. This machine had a limited loading capacity and although it worked perfectly well in practice, it occupied a lot of space and was difficult to relocate.
The ideal solution was a free-standing inverter which loaded and unloaded from the front but which could be accessed by pallet truck. Hence, in the early eighties, the dual clamp style of machine, such a Premier Pallet Systems’ FS DC model, have come into prominence. This is now recognizably the most versatile pallet transfer system on the market. It can be designed to handle heavy weights and a wide variety of load heights.
Premier perfected this design further with their FDL model which has enclosed working parts and was aimed specifically at the food and pharmaceutical industries. In recent years, these operations have provided the key market for inverter suppliers.
With increased hygiene standards has come the requirement to eliminate wooden pallets from production areas. From the late eighties, the move was heavily towards plastic pallets which were easier to keep clean. We have reached the point now where perhaps 40% to 45% of the pallet inverters in use are employed to switch food and pharmaceutical ingredients from wood to plastic.
One further development was required to perfect the concept of pallet inversion. With most machines it was still necessary to remove the recovered pallets manually. Premier’s Pallet Changer takes things one stage further by loading at floor level, tipping the product on its side, then re-presenting the pallet back to the floor for removal. The cost of this system is relatively high in comparison to the still-popular simple FLT loaded models. However, it is an indication of the importance of the pallet inverter in most warehouses now, that it is a price many companies are prepared to pay.