Schwerdtle Stamp Co. has developed a new hand-held branding iron for the pallet industry.
Schwerdtle, which also developed a durable, high-heat branding alloy for branding dies for automatic pallet nailing machines, reduced the weight of the hand-held branding iron by more than 2 pounds and designed a new ergonomic handle.
The new ERGO brander, with an IPPC branding die attached to it, weighs 6.7 pounds. The ergonomic design of the handle allows a worker to safely and easily hold and point the brander in any direction.
The branding unit incorporates 1,000 watts of power for fast marking times. Dwell time, the time the branding head is in contact with the wood, is 1-3 seconds. The recovery time between brands is about 1 second, which is faster than most workers can move to the next pallet.
The high power also means that there is less effort required to make a clean mark. There is no need to press hard when branding the pallet; firm pressure with a slight rocking motion is all that is needed.
“Because of the extremely high temperature, we make the dies out of the same material that we developed for the automatic nailing machines,” said Kathy Schwerdtle, president of the company.
For more information, call the company at (203) 330-2750 or visit www.palletbranding.com.
