Astro Wood Stake and EAM-Mosca Create Unique Strapping Solution

In 2012, when Gary Lubbers, owner of Zeeland, Michigan’s Astro Wood Stake (AWS) realized he needed to replace his old and increasingly unreliable strapping machines, he took a two-pronged approach to finding a new supplier. By web search, he became intrigued with Mosca’s precision strap track and DC brushless sealer drive technology. Then, he confirmed the accuracy of Mosca’s claims with a neighboring office furniture maker and long-time Mosca customer, and knew that Mosca would be his new strapping system supplier.

Astro Wood Stake manufactures a full line of high-quality hardwood stakes used by surveyors and construction contractors. The stakes feature finished sides to create smooth writing surfaces, machined points for easy driving into the ground and controlled moisture content to help prevent splitting during use. For the strapping machine, this means that there are sawdust and wood particles to contend with and consistently high tension required to keep the smooth-sided stakes from sliding and degrading the bundle during handling.

Astro Wood Stake met these requirements by purchasing two standard Mosca side sealers, model ROMS4/1-650/600. The side seal configuration reduces the impact of dust and chips, by letting them fall harmlessly through the conveyor rather than into the strapping head. Also, Mosca’s DC brushless drive technology provides highly accurate and consistent tension control to assure uniformly tight bundles, bundle after bundle, day after day.

But the machines were not put into production exactly as purchased. AWS decided to build special packaging lines built around the strappers. The banders themselves were actually remounted on special stands, canted at a back leaning angle and set into bundling lines with steel backplates to help create uniform stacks, rollers to ease movement of the bundles through the systems and as required, a bundle stop to help align bundle ends. The complete conveyor/stacker/strapping systems are caster mounted to allow them to be located at the active production lines as needed.

When the packing line is positioned, an operator receives stakes as they are completed, builds a stack, straps it with EAM-Mosca 9mm wide polypropylene strapping and places it on a pallet. Finished pallets are stored and sold to AWS’s customers around the country.

The result of the investment has been a happy one for Astro Wood Stake. Now, four years after purchase, the machines have lived up to expectations in every way. They have successfully avoided the performance damaging dust buildup so prevalent in wood plants. The high level and highly consistent applied tension holds the bundles together as strapped so that they are delivered with a high quality appearance to customers. And, the strappers have operated extremely reliably. Since installation, AWS has been able to maintain their condition virtually entirely internally, with little to no reliance on EAM-Mosca’s service department. They attribute this to the basic quality and simplicity of the design.

AWS is a living example of how the combination of a Mosca strapper and a user’s ingenuity can create a unique and productive solution to specialized packaging problem.

EAM-Mosca Corporation provides high-performance strapping system solutions to a variety of industries, including food, graphic arts, mailing, fulfillment, logistics, corrugated, wood, and other industrial or consumer goods. We combine innovative equipment with strapping materials manufactured to maximize machine performance and customer support programs that help our customers to meet their performance and productivity goals.

To learn more about any of EAM-Mosca’s other productivity enhancing strapping systems, please call us at 800-456-3420, or email us at info@eammosca.com. You can also connect with EAM-Mosca on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn via the links above.