For about 40 years, the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star received newsprint by bouncing rolls off the back of a semi-trailer, onto a concrete dock, and into an open elevator, which lowered the rolls into the basement of our building. The elevator had a manual release lever that required an operator to reach into the elevator opening to lower the roll.
After the roll descended, the operator was left standing at the elevator opening with no safety devices to prevent a possible fall into the shaft. Fortunately, no one ever fell in--even though the possibility was there with each roll lowered.
At least once or twice a year, a roll would "get away" from an operator and drop into the shaft when it was in the basement-level position, resulting in a cost of about $1,000 to remove the roll and repair damage to the elevator. The dropped roll, of course, was also damaged.
After talking with many people over the past several years about possible solutions, we came across Murley & Associates of Unionville, Ontario. They designed a roll-unloading device that catches each roll in a set of rotating arms (similar in appearance to a three-arm press reel), carefully rotates the roll into position in the elevator, and then automatically releases the elevator once the roll has settled into position. The mechanism can handle both full and half rolls.
The roll-unloading device has programmed safety sensors that will not allow the operation to proceed if a roll is out of position. The operator is no longer required to be anywhere near the elevator-shaft opening. In fact, the entire operation is managed using a movable control switch, which is mounted on the back of the semitrailer for convenience.
We believe that this innovative device has eliminated a major safety hazard and could prove useful to other newspapers.
Paul A. Mollway is director of operations for the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star. E-mail, pmollway@rockford.gannett.com; phone, (815) 987-1457; fax, (815) 961-5827.
©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.