Vacuum Lifters for Melamine Sheets

Advice on shopping for shop equipment that takes the heavy lifting out of loading melamine onto the CNC table. July 15, 2014

Question (WOODWEB Member) :
Does anyone know of a suction type holder or some other way to pick up a sheet of melamine to move it over to the CNC machine without doing it manually? I’m thinking of something mounted overhead to suction to the sheets and have a release once we positioned it on the CNC. We have a lift that puts it fairly close but it's still a lot of heavy lifting.

Forum Responses
(CNC Forum)
From Contributor J:
Where I work we have a Schamz lifter.

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From contributor M:
We bought a Tawi vacuum lift in 2008. We use it every day and it is a back saver. Ours has the option of rotating from horizontal to vertical so that we can pick up from a drywall cart. It is a little tricky to put back down in the vertical position, but we do it all the time. We installed a remote start ourselves. This lets us switch the vacuum pump on or off from the lift. Ours moves via an overhead track. We have two sections of track so that we can move the lift to another part of the building when we need to move product from one bench to another when we are doing large runs of big assemblies.

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This is the latest advancement in automated loading and inventory management available from Holz-Her.

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From contributor L:
We have the Schamz vacuum lift. We had it on a post type arm. It will soon be on a Gorbel bridge crane so we can use it on the router and panel saw. Besides the back it also saves scratches on the panels. It allows easier stack cutting on the saw with less damage.