The gripper makes the difference

Safety begins at the factory gate. Visitors to the Aliaxis plant in Mannheim swap their street shoes for toe-protective versions, put on an orange high-visibility vest and pick up their safety goggles. They are mandatory when entering any hall. Black-and-yellow railings separate pedestrian walkways from the roadway, and crosswalks indicate the designated path across the street. Swinging doors block the way in front of hall gates so that forklifts and people do not collide.

A cold chimney shows where the company comes from: at the end of the 19th century, pipes, troughs and tubs made of cement and clay were fired here. Then as now, FRIATEC GmbH's products conveyed gas or fresh, gray and black water. Over time, plastic has replaced stoneware. FRIATEC has been part of the Belgian Aliaxis Group since 2003 and has been operating under the name Aliaxis Deutschland GmbH since 2019. The FRIATEC brand remains unaffected. Today, 500 employees work five to seven days a week to ensure that customers such as municipal utilities, distributors and pipe layers are supplied promptly with connection technologies for piping systems.

Plant Manager Christian Lang takes occupational safety regulations seriously. He knows what can happen: He, too, regularly receives the group-wide e-mail distribution list that documents all reportable occupational accidents. "Injuries caused by machines hardly ever happen anymore. It is quite different with absences due to musculoskeletal disorders," reports the plant manager at Aliaxis Deutschland GmbH. To combat this, he launched a program about two years ago. The goal: to enforce international standards in occupational health and safety on a group-by-group basis. This includes the 'lifting and carrying' initiative. "For this purpose, we purchased vacuum lifting aids from Schmalz," Lang reports. Five exemplary applications distributed over the 140,000-square-meter plant site make ergonomic work a tangible experience.

It is surprisingly warm in the halls. Injection molding machines tirelessly transform black plastic granules - mostly polyethylene - into sleeves, tees and elbows. If possible, robots take over the monotonous and usually physically demanding removal and placement onto conveyor belts. But sometimes it takes the flexibility and coordination skills of humans to package goods, test equipment or assemble fittings. Such a shut-off valve weighs up to 40 kilograms, depending on its size. Each shift, the assembler must lift nine to 15 of these FRIALOC series valves from the assembly table into a welding jig. Until just under two years ago, the employees helped themselves with a motor jack - or balanced the valves around with pure muscle power. Today, a column-mounted jib crane from J. Schmalz GmbH stands next to the workbench. A JumboFlex 50 rests on it with a suspension hook as a load receptor, which the worker hooks into an eye specially screwed into the workpiece. One touch and the tube lifter lifts the fitting. The transport hanger follows the movement of the operator without resistance, who then lowers the fitting into a fixture. Using electrofusion welding, the worker reliably and permanently joins the individual components. "Younger employees in particular see the benefit. They know that they still have a long working life ahead of them," reports Christian Lang.

The route to another production hall is safe. Just behind the door is a modern individual workstation where workpiece carriers on a transport system make a brief stop. They wait until a skilled worker inserts a metal cartridge into the fixed fitting or removes and packs the finished component. He has help when handling the small 25-kilogram cartridge boxes as well as the unwieldy ten-kilogram shipping cartons: to the right of the ergonomic workstation is a column-mounted jib crane anchored in the floor with a JumboFlex 35. The aluminum jib is shortened so that it can swing just to fit past a wall projection. Until recently, the employee here used a four head suction cup - ideal for the large shipping cartons. What was missing was a solution for the smaller and heavier packaging units of brass cartridges. Aliaxis was faced with the choice of asking the supplier for smaller packaging sizes or adapting the tube lifter. "Changing the gripper would be possible with the quick-change adapter, but it would be more time-consuming", explains Lang. Schmalz suggested the multiple vacuum gripper. Thanks to its minimum occupancy rate of 75 percent, it tolerates surfaces that fall short of the gripper dimension. Safety during lifting and swiveling is still guaranteed. All it took was a more powerful vacuum pump. The experience of the specialist invalidates the fears of her team members: With the JumboFlex, the worker is faster than without thanks to universal gripping.

A completely different challenge awaits in what is known as Production 5. The JumboFlex is in use at a secondary location: sleeves weighing ten to 15 kilograms slide off the treadmill into a collection basket at ten-minute intervals. From time to time, almost as a sideline, a worker stacks them upright on a pallet - up to 110 per day. To relieve him of this burden, Aliaxis looked to Schmalz for a solution that would hold securely on the curved surface even while it was being erected. The vacuum experts combined a JumboFlex 35 with a round vacuum gripper with a silicone skirt. This can be swiveled by 90 degrees and allows the load to be aligned manually. The bellows suction cup, which was actually designed for plastic bags and shrink-wrapped packages, proves that it can handle even more complex geometries one hall further on.

Here, a lattice trolley is waiting with black T-pieces on several levels. A worker lifts them out of the trolley onto the device of the coiling system, removes them for further processing steps and then packs them. Eighty times per shift. Until February 2022, all of this was done with pure muscle power. "The fact that we had to change something here was also evident from the one or other downtime," reports Production Manager Jens Eckstein. The challenge lies in the different geometry of the workpieces - here, both angle and T-shaped fasteners get the wire needed for subsequent electrofusion welding - and the removal from the stack car. "We wanted a gripper that was suitable for every workpiece and every handling process. Schmalz was the only supplier that could reliably handle the gripping of the T-pieces," says Eckstein. Since the various workpieces weigh between ten and 13 kilograms, a JumboFlex 35 is also sufficient here. It is suspended from a column-mounted jib crane that is equipped with a special accessory: the drag chain V-Chain. It reliably packs the hose package of the vacuum feeder and keeps the area below the boom free. This is necessary because the aluminum jib swivels over the coiling line and the manual work station.

This investment is one of the most recent, and Jens Eckstein still remembers the cooperation with the vacuum experts well: "Schmalz was right at the door with a test device. We brought in some of our employees so that they could test the application and handling themselves. That worked flawlessly." The production manager also notices that the team has accepted the ergonomic lifting aid in terms of sick leave: "Back problems are hardly a reason for absenteeism here anymore."

Suspension hooks, multiple grippers, round suction cups with silicone skirt - they make the JumboFlex configurations, which are almost identical up to the operating handle, unique. The different load suspension variants are used according to their strengths and can be changed quickly if required. This feature plays an important role in the final inspection of the FRIAMAT welding equipment. This takes place in a smaller hall. The working atmosphere is quiet. The vacuum generator is located in the adjoining warehouse together with the sound insulation hood, because no one here wants to do without the JumboFlex. The column-mounted jib crane stands next to the testing equipment for the welding machines that pipeline fitters use to irreversibly connect the joints, tees and elbows on the construction site. Initially, the suspension hook is mounted on the JumboFlex. With it, the technician lifts the fully assembled device into the station and starts the 20-minute test run. Once it has passed this, it is placed in a transport case - suspended from the tube lifter. The unit is shipped in a cardboard box. In order to stack it on the pallet in a way that is easy on the back, the worker changes the hook for a double suction cup in just a few steps. All he has to do now is find the hook so that he can test the next 18-kilogram unit. In total, he manages about 16 test runs per day.

Plant Manager Christian Lang rates Schmalz "as a reliable and competent partner. He appreciates the fact that the crane, tube lifter and load handling attachment come from a single source and that he receives a tested overall system. This is because optimally matched components protect against accidents during operation. "Safety really does come first," concludes Lang, bringing the demonstration round to a close. At the machine gate, the safety vests and safety goggles have to be handed in again and the visitors have to leave the safe plant premises in their own shoes - on the demarcated pedestrian path, of course.