Windsor Industries – Vacuum Lifter

Windsor Industries is a leading supplier of premium caskets to the funeral industry, who take pride in their workmanship and creating the highest quality products.

They used to have to pick up the large sheets of board by hand and feed it in to the CNC machine bed.  It took multiple movements, (including 90-degree rotations,) to get the sheet up and onto the bed.

The client contacted us as they acknowledged that a solution to their lifting requirements was needed for Health and Safety.  The only real challenge they had, which was quickly overcome, was it took about a day to get used to the feel of using the vacuum lifter and to get the new process sorted.  Simon one of the team in the factory said the vacuum lifter is so much easier on the back.

To help with the issue of picking up the sheets of board and moving them on the CNC machine, we recommended and installed a floor mounted jib crane with a tube vacuum lifter

While this was a Health and Safety improvement initiative, there was an unexpected benefit of the process being actually quicker than the manual handling process. There is also less fatigue over a day, (often 60 sheets handled per day) so the overall productivity and user-friendliness is improved as well as safety.

Frazer said that the most important bit of feedback was that Kingsley (Stratalign Founder and CEO) explained the different types of vacuum lifters available, which prevented us from investing a lot of money in an option that we now know would not have been so easy to use and would likely have sat there unused, (with the staff reverting to manual handling.) His advice to anyone considering vacuum lifting is to definitely talk to the specialists!