PALLET WRAPPING MACHINES: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A POORLY BUILT PALLET WRAPPING MACHINE AND A GOOD ONE

We've brought and sold hundreds of pallet wrapping machines & service and maintained them we've found over the years, whats good and whats bad. Here are some things we have found you should look out for in when choosing a pallet wrapping machine

The turntable size of the pallet wrapper

Now many companies selling pallet wrapping machines, just sell whatever is offered by a distributor, they don't import or service themselves so they're not seeing the issues or faults like we are. We made some mistakes first following the market offerings. 1500mm pallet wrapper turntables on AU made pallets can be dangerous. In fact any pallet wrapper where the pallet overhangs the turntable could be an issue, especially if you plan to use a ramp. When a pallet overhangs a turntable with a ramp equiped, that pallet will hit the turntable each revolution and scrape up the ramp, not only is this bad for the ramps life, but also the pallet wrappers frame. On lighter loads the pallet could come off entirely.

Carriage location on the wrapper

Now when buying a machine i prefer the carriage on the opposite side to the control panel, it doesn't matter which is which most of the time it wont matter for machine placement, though in some situations the control panel on the opposite side would be nice. if control panel location and access is a problem on an Atlanta machine, we can put the control panel on the opposite side coming out the rear of the mast. I really dislike it when a manufacturer puts their carriage in front of the mast, not only is this machine annoying to pack up and transport between locations, its takes up more space in length and any users putting larger than avg pallets on the machine runs an increased change of damaging the carriage in pallet rotation.

If its not chain drive, its no worth having

Now i haven't sold many actual belt drives, but my contractors hate them as belts are prone to slipping on the turntable drive. Then some genius somewhere also had the bright idea to use straps like woven straps instead of a chain for carriage ascent, the straps are more expensive than chains and are prone to fraying, moving, winding on backwards and coming off. straps instead of chain for carriage assent is of poor design whats worse is they're always on the outside of the mast.

That leads me to the next thing with pallet wrapper carriages, the carriage assent motor should be ontop of or inside the mast, not on the carriage itself, it boggles my mind why somebody would put a pinion gear, AC motor, Gearbox, inverters and run an extra wiring loom to the carriage increasing its weight by 15kg and putting extra strain on the bearings and parts. You could just have the assent and decent motor in the carriage. Must be some accountants or armchair lawyers designing and buying these designs.

The next thing i hate with carriage and mast design is the use of linear bearings and linear bearing rail. Do you know how much a linear bearing rail or bearing costs? Its probably about a $1100 job to replace those including labour, and linear bearings aren't exactly strong. especially when you have the stretchwrap twisting it and trying to pull it off the rail. A linear bearing is over $200.00 now. A full set of Atlanta castor wheels isn't even that much for the carriage assent mount.