Box Wrapping Machines with Top Press

A top press is a plate that comes down onto the top of the load and holds it there while the film goes on. That sounds like a detail until you have wrapped a pallet of light cartons and watched the top two layers slide as the turntable started turning.

This range is for exactly that load: light, tall, uneven, or stacked without interlocking - empty containers, poly bags, garments, snack packs, moulded parts, anything where the weight is not holding the stack down by itself. The press keeps the stack square for the first few turns, which is when a wrap either goes right or does not.

It is also useful on a mixed dispatch bay where the same wrapper has to take a heavy pallet and a light one within the same hour. The press does no harm on a heavy load and saves the light one.

Choosing the right one

Load height decides more than anything else here, because the press has to travel down to your shortest load and clear your tallest. Send both.

Then load weight and footprint, so the turntable is specified for it, and say whether the pallet is driven on by a hand pallet truck. If it is, a ramp or a pit-mounted turntable is the difference between a wrapper that gets used and one that stands idle because loading it is a nuisance.

Then how crushable the top of the load is. A press is a help on light cartons and a hazard on fragile ones, so tell us what is on the top layer.

What this range will not do

A top press does not make an unstable stack safe. If the pallet is built badly - overhanging edges, mixed carton sizes stacked without a pattern - the wrap will hold a bad shape together rather than correct it.

It does not replace strapping on a load that has to be lifted by its own bundle.

And a press adds height to the machine. If the wrapper is going under a low beam or a mezzanine, measure the clearance before ordering, not after.