What is Strapping And Benefits of Strapping
You’ve heard of “strapping”, but you’re not sure what’s involved. Basically, strapping means binding and bundling items together. Strapping is used in transport, manufacturing, construction, and farming—anywhere there’s the production and the need to ready items for storage and transport.
Materials used for strapping, as well as the tools and machines used to apply strapping, come in many different varieties.
Let’s look at strapping in more detail, starting with the materials used to create straps.
Safe and secure strapping: materials
In many industries, traditional materials like steel have been replaced by varieties of plastics and composite materials.
Steel strapping: traditional and widely used
Steel strapping is used in construction and other heavy industries; it’s sold by weight.
Although it’s been supplanted by newer materials over the past decades, steel strapping, with its high tensile strength, is still preferred for its reliability. It comes in many different widths and thicknesses in a variety of grades of steel, as well as in different finishes. Popular finishes for the steel include bluing, wax, and paint.
Plastic strapping materials, such as polypropylene and polyester, are often preferred to steel
When appropriate, companies prefer to use plastics such as polypropylene and polyester for strapping. Not only do plastics offer a lighter weight when compared to steel, but they also help to reduce costs. Sometimes the cost savings in plastics can be as high as 50% over using steel.
Plastics tend to offer safety benefits over steel too, both safety for products, as well as for operators. Plastics are softer and more malleable, so are less likely to damage goods. Steel, with its sharp edges, can be hazardous to operators when placed under tension. And unlike steel, plastics are corrosion-resistant; they’re less likely to rust and become damaged by chemicals.
Plastics also offer benefits in transportation. They offer better shock resistance than steel, and unlike steel strapping, they offer higher compression. This means that plastics can hold heavy loads—which are inclined to shift in transport—more safely and securely.
Currently, environmental sustainability is an ongoing concern.
So in many industries, there’s a preference for plastic strapping because plastics are virtually indestructible… Plastics don’t break down easily when added to landfills. In addition, if they’re incinerated, plastics give off toxic fumes. Recycling plastics is the only way to manage them safely, so there’s a huge and ongoing effort to recycle them.
Solutions have gradually been developed to reuse and recycle plastics, including plastic strapping. Today, many companies offer recycled plastic strapping.
In addition to the many varieties of materials used in manufacturing strapping, there’s a big variety of tools available to use straps safely and economically.
Strapping’s tools: manual, semi-automatic and automatic
Many companies use manual tools for low-volume strapping. Not only do these manual tools apply straps easily, they also tension the strap, making packages more secure. Manual tools are inexpensive and portable, but they are slower than strapping machines.
Battery-operated handheld strapping tools are both portable and are available as kits, with either steel or other form of strapping material. The benefit is that battery tools both tension and seal straps without requiring metal buckles.
Once product volumes increase in factories and warehouses, hand tools are insufficient. Companies require semi-automatic or fully automatic strapping machines.
These machines are more expensive and require installation, but they enhance productivity and profitability.
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