• VRC Expedites Complex Manufacturing Process 
• Dot-Peen System Leaves Its Mark on Forgings 
• Well-Packaged Dinosaur Fossil Survives Long Trip 

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PROBLEM SOLVERS: MATERIAL HANDLING

VRC Expedites Complex Manufacturing Process

Recently Pflow customized 2 Series DB vertical reciprocating conveyors for JL French Automotive Castings, when it was redesigning the manufacturing floor. The most efficient use of existing space required 2 separate areas where in-process castings needed to be automatically elevated to get to the next manufacturing module. In the Pflow system, a servo-controlled asynchronous ac motor continuously provides torque while the platform is stationary, eliminating mechanical floor-level switches and the need to engage the brake during loading and unloading. The design has resulted in zero wasted time and virtuallyinfinite brake life....

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Dot-Peen System Leaves Its Mark on Forgings

When Bharat Forging America, a producer of closed die hot forgings, was contracted by a leading piston manufacturer to provide large piston forgings for a new off-highway equipment engine, it was a requirement that each piston forging have specific information marked on each part. Columbia Marking Tools’s compact PM Micro AXL dot-peen marking unit, with a 7.87 x 3.15 in. marking window, was selected for the job. The dot-peen marking method imposes no perceivable stresses on the forgings and does not create arcing situations that could occur with a laser marker...

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Well-Packaged Dinosaur Fossil Survives Long Trip

Sealed Air provided the packaging used to transport a dinosaur skeleton from Montana to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it could be scanned using state-of-the-art equipment. The fossil was shrink-wrapped with Sealed Air’s CorTuff film to stabilize the fragile surface, and then blocked and braced on the base upon which it would ride using Instapak foam. The reinforced crate to hold and protect the skeleton was mounted to a trailer atop a shock isolation system layered with 3 in. of Stratocell H polyethylene foam. “Not a grain of sand was out of place,” said one of the paleontologists on the science team...

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