Packaging machines for the Howrah belt

Jute: the bale and the hook

A jute bale is compressed, heavy and handled with a hook. That last detail decides more about the packing than anything else.

A hook goes through whatever is on the outside of the bale. Film wrapping a jute bale is film that will be torn within one handling, so it buys nothing. What holds a jute bale is strap, and what protects the goods is the hessian or the wrap the trade already uses.

Tension has to repeat, and on a bale of this weight it has to be high. That is pneumatic strapping tool territory rather than an arch, because the bale is made where it is pressed and does not travel to a machine.

Strap specification is the whole safety question here. Width and thickness decide the break load, and a strap that fails on a compressed bale fails suddenly.

Foundry and engineering: weight in a small footprint

Howrah's foundries ship castings and rough machined parts — dense, oily, and small for their weight, which is the classic burst-carton case.

Tape holds a seam; it does not hold a load. Two straps do, and above a certain weight the box stops being the unit and the pallet takes over, strapped to its load rather than merely wrapped.

The floors are the other half. A foundry floor has sand, scale and a surface repaired many times, and pallet trucks fail at the wheels first. Polyurethane load wheels last considerably longer here and are worth specifying at the order rather than replacing after six months.

An old belt, and equipment that has to fit it

Many Howrah units have been in the same building for a very long time. The doors were sized for what was made in them then, the floors are not level, and the columns are where they are.

None of that stops a machine going in, and all of it decides which one. A turntable needs a clear circle and a level patch; a bench machine needs neither. Where the floor is not level, a turntable will not run true, and that is a civil job before it is a machine purchase.

Send a photograph of the space and of the route into it, not the dimensions of the room. Door width, the turn at the top of a ramp and the columns are what rule machines in or out.

Humidity, and a river

Howrah is humid for most of the year and sits on a river, and board behaves accordingly. A carton rated for its load when dry is not rated for it after a week in a riverside godown.

Strapping compensates for a good deal of that. Two straps at moderate tension hold a softened carton's shape where tape alone will not — and the tension has to be moderate, because a damp carton cuts at the edge.

For machines rather than goods, the same climate argues for keeping electrical parts dry and for blowing a machine down at shift end. Neither is exotic and both extend the life of the equipment considerably.

A supply that dips, and a machine that has to live with it

Several of the older Howrah sheds run on a supply that sags when the heavy plant starts, and that is worth saying at enquiry stage rather than discovering afterwards.

A heater in a strapping head or a sealer does not fail dramatically on a low supply. It runs cool, and a cool weld holds until it is handled. The complaint that comes back is a joint that opened in transit, which is then blamed on the strap.

Tell us the point you intend to run it from. Where the supply is known to dip, the usual answer is a dedicated point rather than a spur off a machine circuit, and in some sheds a stabiliser - which is an electrical job for your own contractor, not something we would sell you sight unseen.

The same applies to earthing on an older floor. It is quick to check before the machine arrives and awkward to arrange around it afterwards.

Buying across the country

Faridabad to Howrah is a long haul, and the freight line on the quotation says so. Prices are ex works, with GST and freight quoted separately.

At this distance keep the parts that stop a line on your own shelf — the heating element and strap guides on a strapper, the tension wheel and cutter on a pneumatic tool, the wheels and seal kit on a pallet truck.

For a fault, call. Most problems on these machines are settled on the phone with the machine in front of you, and at this distance that is much quicker than anything else.