With Right Strapping, Packaging Can be Done Effectively!

Written by Kevin Fowler, owner of Hunter Industrial Supplies.

Do you know what the best way to pack your valuable is? It’s by choosing the right strapping material. Knowing what kind of package you have will certainly help in determining what kind of strapping you need to purchase or your next move.

The following post-emphasis on certain things to consider while looking for the right strapping based on your product and application. Now there are several kinds of strapping material available around: Polyester, polypropylene, steel, nylon, and of course tools. The physical package characteristics are an important piece to figure out which product is best for you. Now there are three elements to consider: corners, load integrity, weight.

Characteristics

• Corners- Being one of the most important characteristics of selecting the right strapping material is the corners. In case, you have a rigid load such as steel blanks, it’s unwise to use plastic strapping directly. These sharp metal edges will just cut right through the plastic without edge protections. However, edge protectors keep the plastic or steel straps off the actual package so it doesn’t cause damage.
• Load Integrity- Popularly known as stability, this characteristic affects the strap selection. There are times when loads are made from numerous packages that tend to separate. One of the best ways is to fix this to unitize them with strapping. Straps are meant to provide the stability needed to help secure products. In fact, they also help in keeping things solid, for example- stackable loads.
• Weight- Do you know that every piece of the strap has a specific tensile strength or break strength, that’s the stress as soon as it breaks or disfigures on the permanent basis? One of the best examples for this is a 15,000 lb. load of steel products wouldn’t be strapped with light duty poly straps. This simply won’t work as it won’t be able to hold and break strength that could hold the load together. Another example to consider is- heavy duty steel straps holding together fragile products. In this case, chances are there the strap itself could damage the product instead of protecting it. Always pay attention to a strap’s break strength when choosing between different products.

Time to understand the differences in the packages

• Rigid or Self-stacking- These packages are the ones whose load dimensions remain constant before, during and after strapping.
• Expanding- These packages are the ones whose dimensions become larger right after being strapped. 
• Shrinking- These packages have dimensions that become smaller after strapping.
• Compressible- Those packages with dimensions which become smaller right after strapping but automatically rebounds as soon as the strapping is removed.
• Combination- These packages will compress when strapping is applied or when products are stacked on top and will automatically rebound when the strapping or top-level products are removed.

Steel sheets are the best example for rigid or self-stacking loads that remain constant before, during and after being strapped. As a result, they require strapping that can be applied with high initial tension and that will retain high tension during storage, handling, and shipment. Cotton bales can be considered as the best example for expanding load. These kinds of loads are initially compressed in a baler. After this, they get strapped since the load rebounds significantly when compression is removed. Here the key is that the right strapping must be able to withstand the high pressure.

Shrinking loads needs strapping that shrinks as the loads get smaller. Here a cube of bricks stacked and strapped together would be an example of a shrinking load because as the bricks rub together during transport, they become smaller. In order to compensate for such shrinkage, the strap must have excellent elongation and elongation recovery properties.