Packaging and strapping machines in Ludhiana

Hosiery and knitwear: bales, bundles and crush

Knitwear takes up a lot of room for little weight and squashes down easily; the entire challenge is keeping it squashed without leaving marks on it. Let a bale spring back on the road and it turns up at double its packed size, and the extra freight was never in anyone's costing.

Strapping is what holds it, and tension is the whole argument. Too little and the bale expands; too much and the strap marks the goods through the wrap. A semi automatic strapping machine with a repeatable tension setting is worth considerably more than a hand tool here, because the setting stops being a matter of who is on shift.

Earlier on, when each garment goes into its polybag before baling, an impulse sealer does the job; and cartons of finished pieces go onto a low table top strapping machine set at the end of the packing table.

A word of warning, though: on a soft bale the strap digs in at the corners. Inexpensive edge protectors prevent it, and the time to plan for them is when you choose the machine, not once a buyer has sent a consignment back.

Bicycles, parts and fasteners: weight in a small box

A carton of bicycle parts or fasteners is small, dense and heavy, and it fails in the opposite way to a knitwear carton. The box does not crush — it bursts, usually at the bottom seam, usually in a stack.

Tape on its own cannot carry that weight, but a pair of straps can — so a typical Ludhiana parts unit closes the box with a carton sealer and takes the load with a strapper. If every box is the same size, a semi automatic carton sealer is the obvious choice; if the sizes vary, taping by hand and then strapping is frequently the better buy than a sealer needing adjustment for each change.

Bicycle frames and complete cycles are a different job again — long, awkward and not an arch problem. That is pneumatic strapping tool territory, applied to the bundle where it stands.

Buying a machine a day's drive from the works

Ludhiana lies well outside the NCR, and we prefer to be clear about what follows from that. Your machine is test-run in Faridabad before it goes out by road, and it is packed for a long journey — more thoroughly than a machine heading only as far as Delhi.

If you have your own transporter — and most Ludhiana buyers do, because the route is a busy one — tell us and we will hand the machine over to them packed and ready.

Where the machines go in Ludhiana

The industrial addresses here are the focal points and the older estates: Focal Point phases I to VIII on the Chandigarh road, the Industrial Area A and B estates, Dhandari Kalan out on the GT Road, Gill Road, Bahadur Ke Road for hosiery, and the newer plots around Sahnewal.

Dhandari Kalan and the Focal Point phases are where the heavier engineering sits; Bahadur Ke Road and Gill Road are hosiery. It is a useful split, because it usually tells us which half of this page applies before we have asked.

Strap: the thing most Ludhiana lines get wrong

When a Ludhiana unit rings us about a misbehaving machine, the strap is to blame more often than the machine is. Adjust a strapper for 0.55 mm and it struggles with 0.63 mm; set it for 12 mm and 15 mm strap will not feed at all. Strap picked only because it was cheap also varies from batch to batch, and that is how a machine comes to have 'suddenly stopped working'.

So if a strapper you have is giving trouble, examine the strap first, before phoning anyone. If you are about to buy, name the strap you use and we pick the machine to match. PP strap rolls are available from us too, but we will happily set up for your existing strap instead of asking you to switch.

Spares and support at this distance

Wear parts for all our models are kept in stock here, but with Ludhiana a day's drive from the works it makes sense to store the few line-stopping parts at your own unit as well: for a strapper, the heating element and the strap guides; for a carton sealer, its blades.

If something goes wrong, phone us. Talking it through while you stand at the machine fixes most faults on this equipment, and from Ludhiana nothing gets you running again sooner. When ordering a spare, include a picture of the worn part, since one part can go by several names depending on the supplier, while a photograph is unambiguous.