One world market leader opts for another – Wanzl's testing laboratory gains a ZwickRoell testing machine
Wanzl Metallwarenfabrik GmbH is the world's largest manufacturer of supermarket shopping carts and trolleys. Wanzl’s product quality provides a benchmark for customers around the world, establishing the company as a leading international supplier to global trade. Its badge of quality - 'MADE BY WANZL' - has long been an established presence in many additional areas of application in other sectors. To secure continuing advances in product quality the company uses a state-of-the-art ZwickRoell testing machine
Depending on location and level of use, the average service life of a shopping cart is 10-15 years. In extreme cases they may be used on over 100,000 occasions, in some cases with very heavy loads. To cope with such loading the main component of most shopping carts is steel. Wanzl produces some three million carts a year, for which it uses over 100,000 tonnes of steel. A single cart contains around 90 meters of wire.
As well as the manufacturing process, the material properties of the steel are key to product quality. To test these Wanzl uses a ZwickRoell AllroundLine materials testing machine at its factory in Kirchheim, Germany. The testing machine (Fmax 250kN) is primarily used for tensile and flexure tests on raw materials, as well as for tests on intermediate and final products. For this the testing machine is equipped with a T-slotted platform on which different components can be mounted. The machine's two test areas allow easy changing between individual tests, avoiding the need to reconfigure testing equipment and maintaining test-result comparability, while the state-of-the-art testControl II control electronics allow strain-rate-controlled tensile tests to be performed in accordance with ISO 6892-1, Method A.