New Gripper Pad Design Saves Customer Money and Machine Downtime
Unhappy with the quality of rubber gripper pads used on their machines, a new customer approached us to find a solution to limit the downtime they were experiencing on their machines.
A Bulk Handling Solutions customer based in Essex got in touch with us to ask us to re-cover rubber gripper pads for their fleet of machines.
Growing machine breakdowns
A growing number of machine breakdowns for the customer had led them to question the quality of their existing gripper pads. After some investigation, it transpired that the rubber covering for the pads was not up to a high standard resulting in significant disruption to their manufacturing processes.
Always keen to get to the root of the problem and provide our customers with the ideal solution to their problems, one of our Sales team travelled to meet the customer on their site.
Tom, our Sales Executive commented, “We wanted to see these gripper pad parts operate, to allow us to get an understanding of the stresses and strains involved. It’s important to investigate the current issue in order to suggest the most suitable solution.
We determined that one of the main issues with the current product was the poor bond between the steel and rubber so sat down with the design team to come up with the best solution to rectify this.”
The Clifton Rubber Production Team used an autoclave bonding process to ensure a secure bond and we chamfered the leading edge of the covering to further improve the longevity of the product.
Clifton Rubber only use the highest quality materials to ensure our products stand up well against a range of industrial environments, so this was no different.
The customer was delighted with the outcome.
Since Clifton Rubber has taken over the re-covering of these gripper pads the customer has had no premature failures and the products have a much longer lifespan. All in all, the new gripper pads are saving the customer money per part and reducing the down time of their machines. A great solution delivered to a happy new customer for the company.
