Occasionally we are involved in developing a machine or mechanism that is to become a product that will be built in significant quantities. The picture below is of a machine that recuperates plastic strapping. In the corrugated box industry, raw box board comes bundled in polypropylene strapping, the same strapping is used to package piles of the flattened boxes that are the final product of the box manufacturers. Disposal of the strapping is complicated by the fact that it takes up a lot of space in the waste containers. This machine, designed on behalf of an entrepreneur in the box board industry, allows random lengths of used strapping to be fed in by an operator. The machine trims the end, splices it to the last piece that was fed in, cuts out the original splice and replaces it with a neat new splice and coils the recycled strapping onto a roll. This all happens at a rate of 36" per second. The recycled material is of high enough quality to be reused in automated strapping equipment Robust Machine Design came up with the concept, carried out a feasibility study that included weld strength testing, designed, built, wired and programmed the machine. An off the shelf miniature PLC was used as the controller and high performance stepper motors were used to drive the feed wheels.