Pneumatic Strapping Tools

A pneumatic strapping tool goes to the load instead of the load coming to a machine. You run it off the shop air line, put the strap round the pallet, bundle, coil or crate where it stands, and the tool tensions, seals and cuts in one operation.

That makes it the right choice for everything an arch machine cannot swallow: palletised stacks strapped in the dispatch bay, bundles of pipe, angle and rod in a steel stockyard, timber and board, cable and wire coils, machinery crated for export, and anything strapped outdoors or on a vehicle.

It is also the practical answer for a unit whose strapping volume is real but scattered - a few loads here and a few there, in different parts of the works - where buying a machine for each bench would be wasteful and carrying loads to one machine would be worse.

Choosing the right one

The first question is the strap. PP and PET behave differently and the tools are built for one or the other, so the strap you already buy usually decides the tool. Width matters too. Tell us both and the choice narrows to one or two models.

The second is the joint. A seal-type head crimps a metal seal onto the overlap; a sealless head makes the joint in the strap itself, with no seal to buy or to run out of. Sealless is cheaper to run and one less thing to stock; seal-type is what many stockyards are already set up for. Neither is simply better.

The third is your air. A pneumatic tool needs clean, dry air at a steady pressure and enough flow. If the compressor is at the far end of the works feeding six other things, say so - it is a more common cause of poor tensioning than the tool.

What this range will not do

A hand tool does not give you the identical tension a machine does. It is consistent enough for transport restraint but it is not the choice when every carton has to be strapped the same for a customer's inspection.

It is not a production tool for a fast bench. If somebody is strapping cartons one after another all day, a semi automatic machine is faster and less tiring.

And it will not work properly on a load that is not stable. Tension pulls a leaning stack further over, not straighter.