Based in Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, Enviro-Tech is a powder-coating company focused on materials used in the agricultural, oil field, medical and automotive industries. After installing an intelligent lifting device to replace a manual task, the company improved production with fewer workers and safety risks.
Previously, two people used a forklift to position and load heavy grain bin foundations onto a powder-coating line. The slow and labor-intensive process also increased the potential for physical injury.
“Our problem was getting the parts onto the moving paint line efficiently and safely,” says Tim Klassen, owner of Enviro-Tech Powder Coating. “Before this, we had two operators loading and now there’s one operator who can grab and put the part on the line.”
Equipped with a magnetic end effector, the new intelligent lifting device (Gorbel) lifts the parts—which can be up to 8 feet long—from a stack and hangs them on hooks to suspend the product as it goes through the painting line. At the end of the line, the product is removed from the hooks and stacked using the same handling device.
“We have more flow, less congestion, and we can consistently keep up with the rail speed,” Klassen says. “It’s a good system, and something we couldn’t be without on this line.”
