Vacuum Tube Lifter
For handling large sheets - raw and laminated - MDF - Particle board-
For loading single or twin zone CNC, beam saw, Postformer, etc.....
Vacuum-aided loading and unloading of CNC centres improves productivity and profitability and makes work easier for the operators.
The new CNC woodworking centre has arrived and has been installed. It runs well and produces parts as planned, but the expected economic advantages are not being achieved. One possible reason for this is that the available performance of the machine is not being fully utilized, although the repayments and the operating costs still have to by paid. In the knowledge that machine running times are not all productive times, it is clear that all unproductive times must be reduced or – if possible. eliminated.
There are various possible approaches to this. A very important item is the time spent setting up the machine: in many cases, highly modern CNC woodworking centres are not equipped with suitable workpiece clamping systems and loading and unloading is frequently carried out manually. In both cases, there is an enormous potential for improvement. A typical example of this is a woodworking firm which specialises in windows and interior fittings for living rooms, kitchens and bathrooms, which purchased a CNC woodworking machine for milling, drilling and edge-machining, but continued to load it manually, just like its predecessor..
From two-man handling to a "one-man show"
However, since the workpieces were up to 4,000 x 1,500 x 22mm in size and, in some cases, weighed more than 100kg, loading and unloading of the machine had to be done by two people. The fact that production was not possible during these operations and that the second man had to be on-call and therefore had to continually interrupt his own work, quickly became a source of annoyance to the management.
They therefore started to look for a handling device for loading and unloading the CNC machine which was suitable for the task and flexible enough to handle the varying workpieces. After a thorough analysis of the requirements, Schmalz was able to present a convincing solution which would permit workpieces exceeding a certain size and weight to be handled, with the aid of a lifting device, by a single person, namely the machine operator. Smaller workpieces would still be handled manually, as in the past. Since, as already mentioned, the workpieces could be up to 4,000 x 1,500 x 22mm in size and weigh up to 110kg, and because it was necessary to handle workpieces with different surfaces (coated or veneered sheets of chipboard, furniture elements, working surfaces made of Corian, etc.) carefully and without damage, the device chosen for this task was a vacuum tube lifter JumboErgo 110 capable of lifting loads of up to 110kg.