Semi-automatic table-top strapping machine

01 · HOW IT CLOSES

Heat-welded, no metal consumable

Pass the strap round the parcel and through the table guide, press, and the machine tensions, fuses the two runs together and cuts: a couple of seconds and a smooth joint, with no steel edge to catch a glove or cut when lifting. The only consumable is the strap reel. The tension control raises or lowers the force: low to close a cardboard box without crushing the edges, high to hold a block of material or a small pallet.

02 · IN THE BEE WORKSHOP

Frames, boxes and pallets with the same machine

After melting out and unwiring, frames come back in a heap; strapped in blocks of ten they go whole into the steam or hot-water bath, stack and are stored identified by batch or apiary. A block of Dadant or Langstroth frames, about 42 cm, is well above the minimum strapping area of 100 × 200 mm. The same machine closes order boxes and holds a pallet of material in the store.

03 · TWO WARNINGS

Heat and wax moth

Polypropylene strap works up to about 100 °C: in a hot bath it relaxes and loses tension, so the block is strapped again dry before storing and never used as a handle to lift a parcel just out of the heat. And only clean frames are strapped, with no comb or pollen: a tight block of drawn frames does not ventilate, and that is what wax moth is after.

04 · THE MACHINE

Ordinary socket, bench height, castors

It runs on 220 V, 50 Hz single-phase, no three-phase. The table sits at 760 mm, bench height, and takes up to 80 kg of parcel; the minimum parcel is 80 × 20 mm. It takes strap from 6 to 15.5 mm and 0.5 to 0.7 mm on a 200 mm core reel, that of the house’s white 12 × 0.65 strap (3316), or 280 optional. It weighs 85 kg and sits on four braked swivel castors: to the dock on dispatch days and back to the store. No scheduled maintenance.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

The strapping machine is supplied on its own, without a reel; the 12 × 0.65 mm polypropylene strap on a 2,000 m reel is 3316.