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.
Pallet inverters are fast becoming a major part of many industries. As with all hot trends the number of websites that offer insight and product knowledge about them grows. The pallet inverter is no difference so we thought we’ve listed the main website across the globe in the right-hand side bar.
To indicate the world wide spread of the pallet inverter check out www.palletinverter.com.au for Australia.
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
First and foremost we believe you cannot have safety without quality and pallet inverter reputations are built on building safe systems. This starts with each component part that are bought in and of course is particularly critical with electrical and security items. For example, the Reer photobeam system that have been used by the likes of Premier Pallet Systems for a number of years now has proved hugely dependable. Whenever you fit sub-standard components to equipment, safety is compromised.
A pallet inverter is not a machine you would expect to change as often as you change cars, or forklift trucks for that matter. The lifespan of a well-built machine should be 10 years in even the busiest location. Indeed, the average lifespan of the machine we build here is proving a good deal longer. Some manufacturers made a conscious decision a long time ago not to build pallet transfer systems that need replacement every 4 or 5 years as they had no wish to sell shed loads of spare parts. The best policy in the long term interests of any company is to sell equipment built to last. Once they get into the enviable position of having many hundreds of machines out in the field and an equal number of very satisfied customers they can call on them for reference or recommendation to new clients.
One fear about building quality is always that the market may be saturate with machines which never wore out or needed replacing. However, the market has continued to grow throughout the world and existing customers regularly return to us for second and third machines.
Much pallet inverter business nowadays is conducted through agents abroad. The many companies who offer pallet inverters have come to rely on a dependable high quality machine. The last thing these distributors need is equipment in the field that results in continual breakdowns and irate phone calls from customers.
Some pallet inverter agents are very small companies, even one man operations. It is a great advantage to all concerned that such is the reliability of the inverters they do not need an extensive service back up to support them. It also means that prices can be kept highly competitive as there is not the need to allow any appreciable budget for warranty repairs.
Broadly speaking you could say that any company who handles their product on pallets has a potential need for a Pallet Inverter.
Generally, customers can be broken down into 4 categories, one of these being to recover broken pallets or damaged goods at the bottom of a stack. It is fair to say that almost every inverter ever sold has at some time been used to give quick access to the bottom of the stack; many of them for only that purpose. Good housekeeping and better presentation to customers are two good reasons to have a pallet transfer device available at short notice when product starts to spill.
The biggest users of inverters are undoubtedly food and pharmaceutical companies who need to switch incoming goods from wooden to hygienic pallets for use in production areas. This principally applies to factories who manufacture products with a wide range of ingredients e.g. biscuits, cakes, snack foods, ready meals, health foods etc. Often the packaging material as well as the foodstuffs have to be transferred.
Hygiene is becoming increasingly critical and it is now out of the question for a wood pallet which could harbour any amount of chemicals or contamination from previous uses, to be allowed into a clean zone.
Any company that runs a high-bay warehouse or coldstore will be aware of the dangers of racking a broken or unstable pallet. Therefore, inverters are also used to guard against sub-standard pallets entering the system where they can cause delays or accidents.
The same hygiene and safety-conscious companies who employ an inverter on the incoming side of their operation may also use one for outgoing goods too.
Pharmaceutical products in particular are often palletised on plastic or other top quality skids in the factory but are switched to cheaper expendable pallets for distribution. A pallet transfer device gives the option to put goods on to the most suitable type of unit for distribution immediately prior to shipping. A producer may not know the destination of the goods at time of production, but now has the flexibility to transfer them to the most suitable pallet for the market concerned.
The fourth category of pallet inverter user is the company who simply needs to turn something through 180 degrees. There are many examples:
* Printers who need to print on both sides of the sheet of paper.
* Producers of laminated product such as MDF board.
* Cheese producers during the maturation process.
* Vineyards will allow the cork to expand in the neck of the bottles then turn them through 180 degrees for long term storage.
* Concrete sections can be inverted to remove the steel mould.
* Bananas are turned after ripening for better presentation in the supermarket.
Just when we think we have heard every reason for 180 degree inversion, our customers will come up with one more.
The challenge with pallet inverters is to make them work with all types of loads
Pallet inverters in one form or another have been in existence for over 30 years now, but as with all forms of technology, things move on.
FS (Free Standing) Turner. Firstly, it is notable that the FS style of inverter (also called pallet inverter) with a single clamping table and accessed by forklift truck, remains the most popular model on the market. As operators prefer not to leave the cab to control the machine, there is a move now to remote control and especially infra-red; however, the basic inversion function remains the same. More loads these days need to be re-inverted into the upright position for better presentation. Using the FS from a forklift truck means the original pallet has to be lifted off first before placing the new one on. This can be problematic.
Pallet Changer. Therefore, ideas are switching towards systems which recline the load temporarily and return just the pallet to its original position for exchange. The Premier Pallet inverters do just this. It begins by gripping the pallet and enclosing the load from top and sides then reclining everything through 105 degrees. The pallet can now be detached from the product and returned to ground level for removal.
The importance of this operation is that it is no longer necessary to touch the pallet by hand. Increasingly, companies are instituting systems which preclude any manual lifting of loads over 25 kgs, especially anything as awkward to handle as a pallet. The Pallet inverter can be used in conjunction with a pallet stacker and dispenser, one to accumulate the old pallet and the other to dispense the new one.
The challenge with this style of inverter is to make it as universally workable with all types of load and sizes of pallet if it is to become a serious competitor to the traditional machines. One option is to tip the product back into a ‘V’. This works well with some goods, but forces everything to one corner of the pallet; also bagged goods tend to collapse when resting on their edge in this way.
Cost is obviously a big factor in the decision making process when buying a pallet inverter / exchanger. Again, the newer styles of Pallet inverters rely heavily on multiple hydraulic functions and quite sophisticated control systems. With anything up to 5 moving features on a machine, the use of PLC control is inevitable and proportional hydraulics make the sequence relatively fast. This comes at a price which up until now has mostly only been affordable to the pharmaceutical industry.
Inline conveyor fed: Premier’s latest project is to rationalise this process and produce a more simple and universal model with options to upgrade additional features.
Customers are also increasingly interested in conveyor-fed, fully automated pallet exchange systems. The ideal scenario in most warehouse keepers’ minds is that a pallet stack can simply be placed on the end of a conveyor and picked off at the other end on a new pallet. Of course, this is feasible, but the challenge for exchanger system designers is to do it at a justifiable price. Loads which can be exchanged once onto a new pallet are relatively easy to handle. However, when the load has to be re-inverted onto a new pallet the original way up, this involves a lot of extra movement and handling. Solutions are being found and Premier Pallet Systems maintain their pledge to stay at the forefront of this technology.
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.