Semi-automatic table-top strapping machine

⚙️ Heat-welded joint, with no metal consumable

The machine heats both runs of strap and fuses them into each other. There are no steel seals or plastic buckles to buy, count or reorder: the only consumable is the strap coil itself, sold separately. The joint comes out flat, with no metal edge to catch a glove or cut your hand when you lift the bundle.

🔄 Melted-out frames: from a loose heap to a bundle you can carry

Once frames have been melted out and de-wired, they come back to the workshop in a heap. Strapped ten at a time they behave as a single piece: they go in and out of whatever cleaning system you already run —steam, very hot water, immersion—, they stack without spilling and they store in the space they actually need, with each bundle marked by batch or by apiary. A block of Dadant or Langstroth frames, around 42 cm long, sits comfortably above the minimum surface the machine needs.

⚠ Two warnings from real use. Polypropylene strap works up to 100 °C: in a hot bath it relaxes and loses tension, so re-strap the bundle dry before storing it, and never use the strap as a handle to lift a package that has just come out of the heat. And only strap clean frames, with no comb or pollen left on them: a tightly strapped block of drawn comb does not breathe, and that is exactly what the wax moth is looking for.

📐 Tension from 15 to 45 kg: cardboard and heavy stock on one machine

The tension dial raises or lowers how hard the strap pulls before it welds. At the low end it closes a cardboard box without crushing the edges; at the high end it holds a block of equipment or a pallet so that nothing shifts in transit. It takes polypropylene strap 6 to 15.5 mm wide and 0.5 to 0.7 mm thick, on a coil with a 200 mm core —the size of the 12 mm strap we sell as a refill— or 280 mm as an option.

🏗️ Ordinary socket, bench height and braked castors

It runs on 220 V single-phase at 50 Hz: no three-phase supply and no special installation in the store room. The table sits at 760 mm, the height of a workbench, and the four swivel castors with brakes let you wheel it out to the loading bay on dispatch days and back to the store afterwards. The machine weighs 85 kg and takes up to 80 kg of package on the table. There is no scheduled maintenance.