Specsheet
Most delivery day headaches start weeks earlier, when nobody walked the route from the truck to the bay with a tape measure. This note covers what to check, who to ask and what to send us before the crate leaves the hall.
By Mr Thabo Mokoena, MD, Equipment
Every few months a machine leaves our Sunnyrock hall on a crane truck, arrives at a workshop in Germiston or Pinetown, and stops dead at the roller door. The router fits, the bed fits, the spindle is exactly what was ordered. Its the door that is 40mm too narrow, or the floor that dips at the threshold, or the forklift that cannot get the forks under the crate because the gap between two racks is shorter than anyone remembered.
None of that shows up on a spec sheet. A brochure gives you the footprint of the machine, not the footprint of the crate, and not the space a pallet jack or forklift needs to turn. So before you sign off a delivery date, walk the route the machine will take, from the street to the spot where it will live, and measure every pinch point on the way.
Start at the gate and work inward. Write the numbers down on paper, then take a photo of each spot with the tape in the frame. A photo with the tape showing settles arguments much faster than a number in a WhatsApp message.
Add at least 100mm on each side to the crate size we send you. Forks are never perfectly centred, and nobody wants to scrape a new enclosure on a door rail.
The floor is the second thing people forget. A three axis mill or a heavy plasma table puts a lot of weight on a few small feet. Older units in industrial parks around Isando and Wadeville sometimes have thin or cracked slabs, especially near drains. If you see a crack running through the spot where the machine will stand, tell us early, because we can suggest load spreading plates or a slightly different position.
Then look at power. Most of our larger machines run on three-phase, and a surprising number of small workshops only have single phase at the back of the unit. Get your electrician to confirm the supply, the breaker size and the distance from the distribution board to the machine. If you are on a shared supply with neighbours, ask about load-shedding stages and whether a generator or inverter is part of the plan. Our load-shed plan covers that side in more detail.
Compressed air and extraction come last but they still need a route. Measure where the air line and the dust duct will run, and check the dust stub size against your extraction before the machine is bolted down.
Last winter a cabinet maker in Pretoria West ordered a 2.5m router. The bay was ready, the power was ready, the team had cleared a space. On the morning of delivery the crane driver found a new carport roof over the yard that the landlord had put up the month before. The crane could not lift over it. In the end the crate was offloaded on the street, opened there, and the machine went in on skates in three pieces. It worked, but it cost a extra half day and two very nervous hours.
A five minute walk around the yard with a phone would have caught it. Now we ask for a photo of the yard from the street side on every delivery, and it has saved us more than once.
When you are ready, send a short message through our contact form with the items below. We would rather recieve five photos and a few numbers than a long email describing the building.
If you are still choosing between machines, read bed before brochure first, then look at the equipment pages with your measurements next to you. Choosing a machine that actually fits through the door is a lot cheaper than taking a wall out.
Continue with equipment, bays, or use our contact form.
