Design and fabrication of a hydraulic press for the big bag baling process

Abstract

When it comes to the storage, handling, or transportation of granulated, powdered, or paste-like products, most industries use Big Bag packaging. One of the advantages of using Big Bags is that they can be reused (Multi-way), and in such cases, there are companies specialized in reconditioning these used packages. At the end of the reconditioning process, the Big Bags must be separated, mainly by size and type, and then baled to reduce volume and facilitate transport. However, in a company located in the southern region of Santa Catarina that specializes in reconditioning Big Bags, it was observed that a manual process was used, relying solely on human weight and strength for this task, which created a bottleneck in the industry's shipping department. Therefore, to solve this production bottleneck, the objective of this study was to design and fabricate a hydraulic press to increase efficiency in the Big Bag baling process. The focus was on eliminating the manual process, thus occupying less storage space and enabling the company to update its market position and increase revenue. With the implementation of the press on one of the work fronts, the company saw an increase in its production capacity of approximately 55%, also reducing the payroll for the sector as less labor was now needed for a larger production of bales. With this reduction, a return on investment of approximately 2.4 months was verified.