The Phoenix Contact ‘Efficiency on Tour’ Vehicle Visits

This week, we had the exciting opportunity to welcome the Phoenix Contact exhibition van to Feed4ward. With our current wire label printer nearing the end of its lifespan and our workload increasing due to new customers. It’s time for an upgrade. We aim to enhance efficiency in our workshop by automating our box build workflow, which is becoming increasingly vital.

One major bottleneck in our process involves multiple tedious steps:

• Printing all necessary labels on a long strip of heat-shrink
• Cutting the strip into individual labels
• Measuring and cutting the wire
• Opening the flattened tube of heat-shrink to insert the label
• Applying, stripping, and crimping the wire, followed by a tug test to ensure security.

This procedure is not only slow but also labour-intensive.

Phoenix Contact offers several tools designed to automate and streamline these tasks, significantly speeding up the process and reducing the potential for errors. Our immediate need was a new printer, leading us to discover the Phoenix Thermomark E.300D. This printer not only prints individual heat-shrinkable labels but also automates the insertion of wires into these labels, eliminating the cumbersome step of manually handling the heat-shrink.

Next on our shopping list is a device that can automate wire stripping, applying a bootlace ferrule, and crimping. The CF 3000-2,5 achieves this in just 1.5 seconds, accommodating various ferrule sizes from 0.25 mm² to 2.5 mm², all with minimal fuss.

Additionally, we are considering the Cutfox 10, a machine that measures and cuts panel wires to specified lengths based on a preloaded table of required measurements.

A special thanks to Tony from Phoenix Connect for his demonstration of these transformative tools. Also to James from Underwoods for organizing this insightful visit.