In the first place, choosing the right wire for your baling machine is vital to ensure you’re producing bales that can be stored and transported with minimal hassle. But it’s equally important to get the right wire to maintain the long-term functionality of your machine. If you’re using the wrong type of baling wire, this can cause unnecessary wear and tear as well as potential stoppages. These kinds of logjams not only impact operational efficiency but they can also be dangerous as they may require manual intervention from an employee. And that’s when injuries occur.

The Golden Rule: Always Consult the Manual

When operating any baling machine, your first point of information should always be the instruction manual. Manufacturers typically recommend a specific type of wire in here, specifying the requisite gauge (thickness) and best material for the job. You should also try to keep a tame industry contact who you can talk to if there’s every any aspect of your machine you’re uncertain about. For most baling machine users, this will be the person who sold it to you, whether it was a new or second-hand machine.

Weigh Up What You’re Baling

Different machines will output bales of different weights and sizes. The most common types of baler are the vertical, horizontal and two ram machines, and each of these produces a slightly different end product. From lowest- to heaviest-duty, the three most common types of baling wire are:

• Single loop bale ties
• Black annealed box wire
• Hi-tensile galvanized stem wire

Which of these you choose will depend on the baler you are using and the material you are trying to bale. Horizontal balers produce large mill-sized bales. Trying to bind these up with basic single loop bale ties is tempting fate and using plastic ties is courting disaster. You’ll obviously need something more heavy-duty. Alternatively, if you’re trying to bale together comparatively small amounts of waste material, there’s no point spending more money on more heavy-duty high-tensile wire, when single loop bale ties would secure the load just as well.

Consider Wire Quality

Whichever type of wire you figure you’ll need, make sure you don’t cut any corners. Quality matters as much as if not more than its tensile strength and ductility. If it’s poorly manufactured in the first place, then this can cause a lot of problems with wires breaking and getting jammed. By using high-quality wire that’s suited to the job in hand, you’ll considerably limit the likelihood of disruption to your livelihood.

Don’t give your money away to anyone less than a quality supplier. When you buy our US-manufactured black annealed wire, you’re purchasing a product with:

• 100% U.S. manufactured steel billets with metallurgically certified chemical composition.
• Wires run continually through a bull-block wire machine to maintain optimum tensile strength.
• Individually annealed strands heated to 850°C in a fluidized sand furnace.
• A carefully applied coat of wax applied across the strands for smoothness.

Always know what you’re buying. When it comes to choosing which baling wire to use, think about the weight load of the materials you’re going to compact, work out which gauge your machine uses and never be tempted to cut corners. At Baling Wire Direct, we supply you with nothing but the best.

Every year in the USA, over 68 million tons of waste paper are recovered and put to use again, achieving a recycling rate of close to 65%. A lot of businesses produce a lot of paper and the first two steps towards meeting this recycling rate are shredding and baling. A common waste disposal strategy nowadays is for businesses to call in mobile shredding companies to take care of their excess paper. From there, clever shredders can bale their own waste and take this to a recycling facility for processing into new paper.

Why bale?

Baled waste materials will generally fetch a higher price from recycling centers. If you have your own baler, this saves you having to pay somebody else to use theirs or selling your shredded paper at a lower rate. If you’re disposing of sensitive documents, baling your own shredded material can add an extra layer of security for your customers as well.

Which bale?

The two main types of balers on the market are vertical and horizontal. Vertical balers are fed from top to bottom. You place material into a hopper by hand before lowering the baling ram in order to compact the material into a cube. Horizontal balers use a hydraulic ram to smash shredded paper into a long rectangular bale. When you’ve crushed the paper into a dense and manageable bale, you feed wires through specially designed slots in the machine to tie it together.

Which wire?

Another distinction is between manual-tie and auto-tie balers. An auto-tie baler can speed up the loading process, allowing the entire contents of a shredding truck to be baled within the space of half an hour. Manual-tie balers will add a little time onto the shredding journey.

For any size bale, you should make sure it’s securely tied. For lightweight baling, plastic banding can be a better option. But if you’re looking to crush out the kind of dense and heavy bales that will bring you genuine competitive advantage, you should invest in some of our seriously strong steel wire.

Where can I buy a baler?

Second-hand baling equipment is freely available and can offer you some upfront savings compared to brand new machinery. Of course, any cost savings will disappear if your machine starts to malfunction. For this reason, it’s important to eschew the likes of eBay and buy from someone who knows about baling equipment. They’ll be better equipped to set you up with something that’s fit for purpose, help you make any necessary repairs and provide you with service and aftercare.

A brand new baler will have all the latest features to maximize safety and productivity. You’ll also probably be offered a comprehensive manufacturer’s guarantee if you buy direct. These things alone can make it an excellent long-term business investment.

Whichever pathway you choose for your business, make vendor relationship management a part of it. It’s so crucial to establish a rapport with a trustworthy vendor at the point of purchase so that you have a baseline of ongoing support. Having someone to troubleshoot problems as you progress should create stable foundations for long-term business growth and bountiful baling.

And if you ever need advice on wires, get in touch!

While serious workplace accidents are rare, The National Safety Council recorded 4.5 million occupational injuries in 2017, at a $161.5 billion cost to the economy and warehousing had the second highest percentage of incidents. Waste management is a high-risk industry. Using baling machinery designed to compact materials down to minuscule size and sever heavy-duty metallic baling wire is particularly dangerous.

With the regulatory landscape embracing more relaxed workplace protections, it will increasingly fall on management’s shoulders to protect their workforce from anything untoward. But some sensible precautions and a proper procedure can help you eliminate the risk of workplace accidents and keep your workforce safe when using waste machinery.

Assess the risk and communicate it

Carrying out a comprehensive risk assessment on any machinery is vital to spot any hazards and risks within the machine. Using an independent to check this is a good idea as you need someone with a thorough knowledge of the legal landscape as well as the machine itself. Once you’ve done this, you need to make sure staff know all about the risks involved and the safe practices they can follow in order to minimize them. It’s all about creating a culture where safety takes priority over everything else. After all, even a minor accident will have a serious impact on your bottom line.

Make space around machinery

While it’s tempting to place a baler in the corner of the warehouse, taking up minimal floor space, the irony of this is that it will often make processing inefficient and create conditions for unsafe loading. Allocate plenty of space around the baler to improve accessibility,

The right equipment for the job

Age, capacity, and upkeep are three important determinants of baler safety. These factors can lead to balers becoming overloaded, underpowered, or dysfunctional, which means it’s more likely to lead with jams. More jams mean more operator interventions and this is when the accidents happen. Prevent this by ensuring your machinery is up to the task with consistent maintenance. If you need more power then consider upgrading when you can.

Ensuring your equipment meets any regulatory baselines is important but not enough. Machine guarding is no good if there’s something wrong with one of your protectors. Conduct regular audits of your machinery via independent contractors. You can’t rely on your staff alone to deal with problems or identify any long-term structural deficiencies. Another way of limiting damage to your baler is by investing in Baling Wire Direct’s high-grade wires with the machine-appropriate gauge.

Insist on full training

It’s hard to gather concrete statistics on the number of operators working without training on the specific machine they’re using. How many people have read the manual from back to front? We’d wager not many.

Anyone operating heavy machinery should know what to do in any given eventuality. There’s no substitute for experience and knowledge. Only trained and experienced operators should be allowed to operate heavy machinery in the first place. You need to know that if something goes down, the person in the driving seat can deal with it. Ensuring people aren’t using dangerous machinery solo by implementing buddy systems will also go a long way to preventing accidents.

When it comes to workplace safety, these things should help you keep yourself and your employees from coming to any serious harm around waste management equipment. Investing time, effort, and money in good safety practices means you’re protecting something more valuable than profit: your employees’ health and wellbeing.

At Baling Wire Direct, we know how important recycling is. It’s a way of reducing the amount of garbage we send to landfill, limiting our energy consumption and conserving our vital natural resources. It’s a $117 billion industry, contributing over 500,000 direct jobs and returning close to 10% of its contributions as tax revenues.

As recycling has grown in importance, regulatory changes on a city, state, and federal level have meant businesses with heavy paper recycling outputs need to turn to more efficient on-site waste management solutions. For paper recycling, this means using baling machines to compact waste paper and cardboard products into tightly bound cubes (bales) that can be more easily stored and transported.

What is a baling machine?

A baling machine, or a baler, is used to compress and bind materials into more manageable bundles for ease of transportation and storage. Once upon a time, these were mainly used for agricultural products (hay, cotton, flax, and straw), but nowadays, one of their most common uses is in the recycling industry.

What baling wire is best for paper recycling?

As well as squashing materials into more user-friendly bales, balers also securely tie them together with the right wire for the task in hand. It’s important to use the correct gauge for your machine type, with due consideration for the amount of paper recycling you’ll be doing as well as the likely weight load of your densely compacted paper bundles. The best baling wire for paper recycling depends on the quantities you’re recycling and the baler you’re using to do it.

Single loop bale ties

A robust and resilient type of wire that will resist expansion, single loop bale ties are a good flexible choice for most purposes. You’ll have to tie single loop bale ties by hand for the most part. But this means it’s more economical as well because you cut it to your required dimensions, you’ll end up cutting down on wire waste into the bargain. If you have a vertical baler, chances are you’ll want to get your hands on some of this.

Hi-tensile galvanized stem wire

Heavy-duty galvanized stem wire is sometimes referred to as stump wire, carrier wire or strand wire. Its high-tensile manufacture makes it incredibly strong and capable of withstanding intense pressure. This makes it perfect for holding together large and heavy bales that need to be quickly moved around and transported long distances. A corrosion-resistant zinc coating helps prevent the wire losing its strength over time by minimizing things like rust.

Black annealed box wire

Black annealed box wire is a seriously resilient product with high-tensile strength and high ductility, meaning it can withstand the harshest of climates. The best annealed wires will have metallurgically certified chemical compositions with individually annealed strands. A light coat of wax adds smoothness to the metal, protecting it from rust and helping it pass through your baler with minimal wear and tear.

Still not sure if you’ve found what you’re looking for? Get in touch with us. Whatever your baling wire needs, you’ll find the right product for you at Baling Wire Direct.

In the modern climate, running a sustainable enterprise has several benefits. Your customers may make decisions based on their environmental impact, your variable costs may be more volatile if you use unsustainable and finite materials or practices, or you may want to do your part to combat global warming. With climate change awareness only looking to increase in the upcoming years, looking towards implementing sustainable practices now may pay dividends in later years. But just how can baling wire promote sustainability?

Use in the Recycling Industry

One of the most common uses of baling wire is in the recycling industry. Baling has great usage in waste reduction and management, and in many cases, it can be more environmentally friendly than waste compactors. Balers can compact different types of recyclable materials in a way that minimizes their volume and hence maximizes the value recyclers obtain by reducing storage costs. Balers can complement existing waste management systems and increase the efficiency of your recycling operation.

Balers are ideal for recycling operations that revolve around reusing materials, as opposed to applying recycling processes that do not require the materials to retain their form. Cardboard boxes are a prime example of how balers are preferable to compactors. If you deal with cardboard regularly, compacting it with a compactor can often affect the durability of the cardboard and morph it out of shape.

Even if the flutes are not affected, this can be less sustainable as the cardboard can only be reused if it has been shredded, mixed with water and chemicals and then mixed with new wood pulp and processed into new cardboard. The electricity required for these processes, as well as the chemicals, still takes a toll on the environment. It requires fewer steps just to reuse the boxes. It is only possible to compact the boxes that will enable them to be reused, such as baling. This is true for any other materials that need to retain their form to be reused without many recycling processes being applied.

Even if the materials that are being baled are not designated for re-use, baling waste can speed up the waste disposal process. This is good for the environment, as a quicker turnaround at recycling plants means more waste can be recycled and turned into renewable electricity.

Wire vs. Twine

Baling wire is sometimes replaced by baling twine, but on farms, this is a mistake. Baling wire can be better for the environment simply because even after it has been used for its original purpose it has an incredible potential for reuse. Many farmers don’t go anywhere without baling wire, as baling wire and pliers can be incredibly handy for quick fixes. From repairing chain link fences to holding up old mufflers, baling wire has too many uses to mention.

Baling wire can also be more sustainable than baling twine due to its high strength. One of the tenets of the sustainability movement is to reduce, and a set yard of baling wire has the strength of countless yards of twine, meaning you won’t have to replace it either. This means if you’re using twine, you may want to consider switching to wire to reduce the amount of baling material you need.