Ready Seal Wraps Up its Palletizing Challenges

Jul 20, 2018

By Jim Butschli - Packaging World

For many of us around the country, winter can’t end soon enough. Beside ushering in warmer weather, spring gives us a chance to tackle some much-needed outdoor projects. Enter Ready Seal Inc.

The Lewisville, TX, company is a privately-held manufacturer of penetrating stains and sealants used in the treatment of woods in decks, outer walls, fences and other exposed locations. In the 25 years since it was founded, this family-owned Texas company has grown steadily from a local firm selling to contractors into a major supplier of its products across North America, as well as to the Caribbean market area and to locales as far away as Fiji.

But as Ready Seal’s growth continued, the labor involved in moving product to and from these wrappers began to create bottlenecks. In 2016, Mauldin was surfing the Internet looking at various available pallet wrapping systems, and found the Pro Mach End-of-Line website, which included a selection of Orion wrappers and accompanying powered conveyors.

“It was immediately obvious that these were complete systems,” he says, “with powered conveyors moving pallets into and out of the wrapper, increasing throughput speed and virtually eliminating the need for manual labor.”

Mauldin contacted Orion’s Dallas-based sales manager Mark Collins, who surveyed the Ready Seal facility and its operation and created drawings designing a system able to move pallet loads with powered conveyors directly to an automated wrapper and then out of the wrapper to a pickup area. From there, loads are moved directly to the dock area for shipping or to the rack area for storage.

Rotary stretch tower

The heart of the first Orion system Ready Seal bought is an MA-DX rotary tower stretch wrapper that can wrap full loads at 18 revolutions/min, enabling it to wrap between 50 to 65 loads/hr. It is fed by Orion-made powered conveyors moving loads at rates to 40 ft/min. It features Orion’s Insta-Thread® film delivery system that prestretches film at a standard rate of 260%.

Orion engineers designed the Ready Seal installation in a U-shape configuration to fit into the company’s production area. Pallets are received from a palletizer located at the head of one arm of the U shape. From this location, powered rollers move the load to the first corner, where chain drives then change the movement of the pallet 90 deg to the left for 15 ft, then again 90 deg as it is conveyed into the wrapper. In this way, the pallet always stays in the same alignment as it moves, making it immediately accessible for a forklift to remove after wrapping.

While in the wrapper, the pallet is wrapped from 2 in. above the top of the conveyor roller to as high as 80 in., depending on the load size, guided by the wrapper’s sensors. When wrapping is complete, rollers move the load off to a pickup area where it can be transferred to shipping or storage.

“The system was configured to meet our specific needs and our space limitations,” says Mauldin. “Orion designed it to fit into a busy production area, and when it arrived, we were able to install it with no problems.”

About Orion

Orion manufactures automatic and semi-automatic stretch wrapping equipment, offering the most comprehensive line of cost-effective pallet wrapping solutions at unparalleled value. As a leader in heavy-duty industrial stretch wrapping technology, Orion is dedicated to creating durable and film efficient machines without compromise to the safety and security of each pallet load. Orion is a product brand of ProMach, a global leader in packaging line solutions. As part of the ProMach Robotics & End of Line business line, Orion helps our packaging customers protect their reputation and grow the trust of their consumers. ProMach is performance, and the proof is in every package. Learn more about Orion at www.OrionPackaging.com and more about ProMach at www.ProMachBuilt.com.

Media Contact

David Starck | 1-720-390-7707

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