industrial furniture

Do Your Industrial Workbenches Need ESD?

February 15, 2010

ESD, or Electrostatic Discharge, can be a serious problem in several industries. Static electricity is a hazard to both people and electronics, and any working environment where it might be a hazard needs to look into ESD control for their industrial workbenches, lab tables and other equipment.

The most obvious industry to consider for ESD protection is electronics. As a long time business operating near Silicon Valley, RDM has extensive experience meeting the needs of electronics shipping, manufacturing and repair facilities. On the other hand, it’s a mistake to think that electronics is the only industry that needs to worry about ESD. If you work around volatile or flammable materials, an electrostatic discharge can be extremely dangerous, to the point of starting fires, explosions and other catastrophic reactions. Even something as simple as sawdust can be ignited by a strong discharge.

ESD control is especially necessary in busy work areas. Working at a slow pace, a worker can take some simple manual precautions to avoid static build up by wearing a strap or occasionally touching a grounded object, but once the work pace increases it’s easy to forget these basic precautions. This is not so say that workers should ignore personal precautions, but they should have industrial furniture that also ensures both their safety and the integrity of anything they’re working on.

RDM offers a complete selection of ESD solutions, including:

When it comes to industrial workbenches in particular, we have static control tables to suit virtually any function. We apply ESD control modifications to most standard workbench models, so that almost any workbench can serve as an ESD bench. Contact RDM to find out more.

Custom Industrial Furniture

December 1, 2009

At RDM we specialize in custom industrial workbenches and other industrial furniture solutions for one simple reason: To Save You Time & Money. If you don’t find the perfect solution for your facility and settle for an alternative, convenient solution, your safety, efficiency and bottom line will all suffer.

For ALL industries, beyond the usual safety and handling guidelines, there are always special needs for specific workshops, laboratories, assembly lines or other professional facility. Here are some of the considerations most people take into account when they order custom industrial furniture:

Appearance: It may seem strange that appearance is a top concern for functional furnishings but every workplace has a clientele to impress. For example, we’ve supplied furnishings for classrooms, where an attractive environment for presentations is essential. Also, many companies require educational & demonstration facilities to share what they do with staff from other departments or the general public. Appearance is also important for morale and internal branding.

Ergonomics: Ergonomics isn’t just about comfort. It improves efficiency and safety by putting important tools within easy reach. At RDM we can help to provide you with the correct ergonomic furniture configurations that will contribute to performance by efficiently organizing your layout to eliminate any disruptions that could interrupt your overall workflow.

Mobility: Some industrial workstations must be moved on a regular basis. At RDM, we provide top quality mobile tables and carts with industrial duty caster (wheel) options that provide the best stability and strength. Mobile tables / carts may also need to be locked in place after being moved. One way we tackle this problem is with floor leveling jacks, which provide a fixed, stable foundation by lifting the wheels off of the ground, leaving the table or cart to rest on fixed levelers or pads.

IT (Information Technology): Computers are essential to modern laboratories and industrial shops. Computer towers, monitors and keyboards need to be stored where they’ll be easy to reach, but won’t interfere with critical activities. At RDM we are continually designing and developing new Computer Workstation solutions to accommodate these needs. We know the challenges our end users face, such as the need for easy to hook for wired workstations, cabling and routers.

Work Surfaces: Your choice of work surface depends upon your specific application / use. In the case of corrosives, we offer a variety of chemical-resistant work surfaces that range from laminated wood to solid surfaces, ranging in price to fit your budget. For electrically sensitive components we offer static control work surfaces. For general workstations, we offer plastic laminated tops that are durable, easy to clean, attractive and support a wide range of jobs.

RDM’s custom industrial and lab furniture solutions can accommodate the exact mix of specifications you need. Our standard models are there to help you make quick, easy decisions. They provide a starting point, and are not a restriction to the solutions available to you. Contact us to tell us exactly what you need and we will build it to your specifications.

Do You Need a Ball Transfer Table?

November 24, 2009

If you’ve ever asked yourself if you need a ball transfer table for your project, the answer is probably “yes.” If you’ve never thought of getting one before, but your shop is growing to the point where it is hard to smoothly transport objects (heavy or small) between stations, the answer is also “yes”. Many startup companies that are new to the industrial industry and its many secrets for efficient work practices do not always think of a ball transfer table as a solution. You may be one of these new manufacturers or you might just be helping out with industrial furniture and equipment procurement, so let’s talk about what a ball transfer table is and how it can make your shop safer and more efficient.

Ball transfer tables get their name from the grid of closely packed ball casters located on a work surface. The balls allow you to effortlessly shift and rotate objects on the table to either transfer them to another station or perform adjustments and inspections more easily in place. Ball Transfer Tops are an indispensible tool when it comes to manufacturing and sorting in a fast production line, particularly when heavy objects are being manufactured or moved. Without a ball transfer table it can require a significant amount of strength to push or turn objects.

You might think that strength isn’t an issue for your smaller applications, especially if you hire to fitness standards, but it’s a fact that extended physical efforts take more time and expose you to the possibility of injuries, particularly if repetitive tasks are necessary to get your production up to speed. Using a ball transfer table is more safe and faster; a properly fitted ball transfer top can quickly pay for itself.

The common linear, disk-shaped skate wheels also have their place, but ball transfer tables should be your choice when you need to sort and rotate objects. Use the standard linear wheels or rollers when you need to move packages or other items in a straight line and use a ball transfer table as a sorting hub, since you can move items on it in any direction. This makes them invaluable in large warehouses, where sorting a single line of inventory into the appropriate categories can be one of the most time consuming and complex regular tasks.

If you are just starting to set up and perform the kind of manufacturing, shipping or receiving that demands a dedicated industrial furniture solution like a ball transfer table, contact us; we’ve been helping businesses with our ball transfer solutions for over 30 years and can help you to design the perfect ball transfer solution for your specific application. Contact RDM for more information.

Three Ways Proper Industrial Furniture Cuts Your Costs

September 11, 2009

If you’re starting up a small workshop or other new manufacturing venture you may be tempted to use lower-priced, off-the-shelf furniture that has been mass manufactured – the kind intended for garages and hobby workshops. It may look like a bargain, but, unfortunately, the savings can be short-lived. Without a proper design, money can be lost to inefficiency or in some cases, larger losses due to furniture failure causing workplace accidents.

You owe it to yourself to outfit your shop with heavy duty industrial workbenches and other furniture specifically suited to commercial use. Here are three ways you can save money by investing a little more money on industrial-duty furniture up-front:

A Less Accident-Prone Workplace: Not every industrial accident causes horrible injuries – but they all waste time and money. Workers spend time getting first aid and taking time off instead of manufacturing your products. You may spend time cleaning spills, disposing of hazardous material, and temporary closing of space – and it may all be the result of an inexpensive work station that had been value-engineered for an activity that it could never satisfy fully. For instance, placing a couple of fans around a standard table is not an acceptable substitute for a real laminar flow clean air HEPA workstation.

Improved Workflow: Time is money, especially for startups that need to prove they can meet high volume demand in order to be taken seriously. That means you need proper workflow procedures to ensure that every station works at full capacity without slowing down any of the others. Standard furniture rarely satisfies the needs to produce an efficient work flow. Instead of planning your shop around inexpensive furniture, plan for it based on the way you’d actually like it to operate. Purchase the industrial furniture with features to match your specific needs, with room to expand and the ability to adapt. This makes workplace flow much easier to achieve. You will be able to produce more, sell more, and prove that you are ready for high volume challenges.

Reduced Maintenance: It’s simple: Industrial Quality furniture is tough. Standard office furniture or lower-grade substitutes are not. Your operations will place all of your furniture under repeated stress. If your furniture fails, you will need to either stop work or find a replacement for that station. Both options waste time and money. But if you buy RDM Industrial-Quality furniture with the proper material and load-bearing requirements, you will save money over the total cost of ownership. A Quality bench, table or other furniture piece will pay for itself.

Contact RDM and we’ll help you develop specific solutions based on your industry, size and other specific requirements. We will help you to design your workplace to become a safer, more efficient and more profitable operation.

Why Doesn’t My Metal Lab Table or Workbench Rust?

September 4, 2009

Everybody knows that stainless steel and aluminum are extraordinarily resistant (though not totally immune) to corrosion. This property makes these metals extraordinarily useful for laboratory furniture of all kinds, as well as heavy duty industrial workbenches. Wood tends to particulate, splinter and burn. Plastic can melt at low temperatures and produce unpleasant chemical reactions.

The secret of aluminum and stainless steel’s resistance to corrosion is called passivation: a chemical process that builds a microscopic layer of nonreactive material between the aluminum or stainless steel work surface and the air. Stainless steel’s passivation process occurs due to its chromium content. When exposed to air, stainless steel produces a layer of chromium oxide a few atoms thick. The passivation layer is just a few atoms thick and is oxygen and water resistant. Generally, the higher the stainless steel’s chromium content the more resistance it offers to the elements, thanks to a more robust passivation layer.

Passivation is a natural characteristic of pure aluminum. Aluminum oxide accumulates on the surface of the metal, halting further corrosion. Be careful – Aluminum alloys do not necessarily have this characteristic, so they can actually be less corrosion resistant, depending on the exact alloy used. In many instances, aluminum is often applied as a thin layer to impart corrosion resistance to other materials.

Various processes can improve passivation but it is never 100% effective. For example, regular abrasion can remove both materials’ passivation layers, making them vulnerable to corrosion, though this normally requires a significant amount of wear and tear. In addition, submersion, galvanic reactions and other circumstances and eliminate the layer. For the most part, these situations fall outside the scope of typical use.

If you have any questions about the aluminum, stainless steel and other materials we use in custom industrial workbenches, lab tables or anything else, don’t hesitate to Contact RDM. We’re happy to answer your questions.

Choose the Right Industrial Workbenches for Your Work Flow

August 11, 2009

Work flow is vitally important to any company’s success, but it’s even more critical in the manufacturing industry, where proper work flow not only improves time efficiency but reduces accidents – and in some industries, serious accidents can jeopardize employee safety. Pinning down, refining and improving your company’s work flow is the first priority for managers, but in too many cases they place the full burden of adaptation on staff or tools and machinery, when the real barrier to inefficiency is inappropriate industrial furniture.

A key industrial workbench can influence every aspect of your work flow. The right one improves flow – the work one hurts it. Let’s examine examples from the four main elements of work flow:

Processes: Proper workstations can make or break the construction of processes. For example, if you don’t have workbenches that are large enough to accommodate a full step you must divide it into sub-steps, increasing overall production time and staffing. If two workers need to be side by side in a particular location, the industrial workbench must fit both the site and workers.

Planning and Scheduling: Your goal is to keep maximum uptime with minimum expenditures. You might require workers to “hot desk” between shifts. Each choice needs to be supported with the proper furniture. If you have hot-desking IT requirements you need room for a workstation computer and its cabling – and ergonomic aids to maintain worker efficiency.

Flow Control: Can you start, stop and modify a moving work flow easily? Without an organized production process the answer is probably “no.” For instance, you may require a flow rack workstation that can act as a hub for the transportation of finish products and components. Without it, you must rely on a process external to the workstation (staff consultation, a database, etc.), increasing the number of steps to both stop and start work.

Transit Visibility: When one workstation evolves into a miscellaneous hub for problem solving this can look like a good solution in the short term, but eventually that space becomes inefficient and swamped with half-finished work. Custom workbenches designed as checkpoints for specific parts of a work flow improve both flow and visibility. Managers need only go to the responsible workstation, either physically or through the station’s computer.

As you can see, it isn’t enough to have the right tools and people. They need a working environment that supports the safest, most efficient operations. That’s what we provide at RDM. Contact us for a quote on industrial workbenches and other furniture that will improve your work flow.

Cleanroom Basics for Lab Furniture and More

June 4, 2009

f you’re managing a formal cleanroom you’ll be conforming to ISO 14644-1 and any other applicable local, federal and international standards that regulate everything from air filtration to your choice of lab furniture. Increasingly, cleanroom standards are used by companies that do not require them, but still use them to ensure consistent manufacturing and research procedures are used in conjunction with these standards in order to provide the best possible quality and yields. A workspace free of excessive air particles makes virtually any manufacturing process more consistent. That is why, even if you don’t operate a full-blown cleanroom, you can make use of the following principles to improve air quality.

Laminar Airflow: There are several laboratory furniture products that can improve airflow and prevent dust, smoke and other particles from spreading through an area. Laminar Flow Lab Benches use the principle of laminar flow to direct airflow into isolated streams. Particles released in one stream are isolated from the others.

Positive Air Pressure: Positive air pressure is a simple, effective concept that prevents outside particulate matter from floating into your lab or other workspace. Whenever there’s a breach in the space due to a door or window opening, a break in floor or wall material, or any accident, positive air pressure pushes outside air away.

HEPA Filtering: A HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter is essential in formal cleanrooms and useful in other contexts where manufacturing or research creates volatile or otherwise hazardous air particles. If you want clean air, your airflow control system should include a HEPA filter. The Laminar Flow Bench includes a HEPA filter. Remember, though that workspace filtering doesn’t affect direct contact, so remember to take normal safety precautions with hazardous materials.

Cleanroom Workbench Surfaces: A cleanroom laboratory table that meets moderate cleanroom standards can prevent problems in almost any manufacturing environment by keeping contamination to a minimum. For instance, if you can easily wipe a table clean, without worrying that particles will adhere, you can prevent contamination from the build-up of particles such as metal, plastic, and other materials. This may increase the duty cycle of your manufacturing machines by ensuring that it’s only processing raw materials, and none of the ambient grit in the workspace.

At RDM Industrial Products we can provide complete cleanroom furniture solutions for everything from workshops that you want to make just a little cleaner, to full standards-compliant cleanrooms. Contact RDM and a representative will match your needs with the exact solution you require.

Gallery Spotlight: Economy Industrial Furniture

May 12, 2009

This month, we’ll look at some of RDM Industrial Products’ economical industrial workbenches and other furniture solutions.

The Model A-109PE Industrial Workbench above is one of RDM’s most popular industrial workbenches. It’s a light duty workbench with no lower crossmember supports, but it’s still tough thanks to its durable, fully-welded steel construction. It supports many, many customization options.

The Model F-103PE Overhead Shelf Workstation is a cost-effective solution for light duty computing. Like the A-109PE, it is greatly customizable – that’s the advantage of buying from the manufacturer.

1P-K Series Static Control Ergonomic Chair shows that you don’t need to sacrifice comfort and safety to stay within your industrial furniture budget. This is a full-featured industrial chair with static-control vinyl upholstery, lumbar support and enough adjustability to suit any member of your staff.

These are just a few of RDM Industrial Product’s economy furniture models. If you’re ready to outfit your shop with professional industrial furniture and want to get the best value for your dollar, Contact RDM today!

Three Reasons Why Everyone Needs Quality Industrial Furniture

May 5, 2009

What do RDM’s industrial furniture and the space shuttle have in common? Both of them have landed at White Sands Missile Range. In 2007, RDM was awarded two defense contracts to build furniture and lockers for White Sands. All in all, RDM provided over $22,000 in products and services to upgrade the base’s storage and furnishings.

Why did White Sands go with RDM? We provide unmatched value for the cost: the kind of quality that they could rely on in an environment that cannot tolerate poor performance of any kind. They need industrial furniture that conforms to their best practices – and so do you. Here are three reasons why you should choose RDM:

Ergonomic Industrial Furniture Reduces Accidents

RDM can create custom shapes and sizes for most of its industrial furniture catalogue, along with ergonomic additions to make virtually any workstation more efficient. This is critical in an environment like White Sands, where staff track missiles, aircraft and other high performance technologies. They need industrial furniture that gets out of the way of their workflow – and so do you.

Custom Industrial Furniture Creates a Controlled Environment

RDM Industrial Products is uniquely diverse. Few laboratory and industrial furniture manufacturers have so many products and capabilities under one roof. That means RDM is capable of not only providing furniture that stands up to extreme stress from heavy loads, heat and chemical reactions, but they can also provide lab tables and other furniture to satisfy cleanroom quality controlled environments. With RDM, you never have to choose between the ideal and convenient solution – RDM Industrial Products provides both, so that you can order industrial furniture that creates the exact environment you need from one source.

RDM’s Industrial Furniture Saves Money

RDM secured the White Sands contract because they provided the best value. RDM’s manufacturing and sales are under one roof, so there’s no need to pay a middleman. RDM manufactures most of our products on site, minimizing reshipping costs that they would otherwise have to pass on to our customers. Please Contact RDM for your Industrial or Lab Furniture needs. See the difference that a complete solution provider makes.

Picking the Right Industrial Workbench Top

March 25, 2009

Your work surface is the most important part of your industrial workbench. If you pick the wrong surface it may stain or wear prematurely. The wrong work surface may even lead to an accident. At RDM Industrial Products, we offer top quality work surfaces for all of our industrial workbenches with a variety of surfacing options. If needed, our sales team can help guide you through the process of selecting the right surface. Below are four quick examples of the workbench surfaces that fit various workplace demands.

Cleanroom: Stainless steel is not always the go-to material for the surface of a cleanroom workbench. The exact requirements are based on particular cleanroom standards. Stainless steel surfaces don’t scratch easily or accumulate foreign matter. They can also be quickly and easily cleaned. Electropolished stainless steel can be very pricey, but is necessary for clean rooms of class 10 or above. For cleanrooms of class 100 or less, there are many other more cost-effective options available, such as our standard plastic laminated top with added phenolic backing sheet. The laminated surface does not particulate, and the underside of the wood substrate is sealed with the phenolic backing sheet.

ESD Static Control: If you are working with static sensitive materials or equipment the top choice is clear: You need a static control table with an ESD protective laminated work surface. These surfaces work in concert with our properly grounded steel table frames, providing a dissipative path that leads harmful static away from your products or equipment. They also help to reduce electrical charge buildup.

Heavy Duty Manufacturing: Stainless steel tables provide a durable work surface for manufacturing, though an additional layer of rough material may be warranted for traction. Keep in mind that in these cases, you will need a table frame that will support your specific load / activity. We also offer solid plate steel tops for heavy-duty applications.

Semi-Service: In this case, the workbench actually serves as front of house furnishing where it’s not only visible to the public, but may even be used by customers. There are a number of “Do it yourself” businesses that need a proper mix of beauty and utility. In this case, the right material is really based on a combination of use and image. Stainless steel is great for kitchens, for instance, while wood (see our wood industrial workbenches) is a great all around material. Also, our plastic laminated tops are available in hundreds of standard colors and patterns.

Whatever your choice for a work surface, we have the industrial table solution you need, or we can manufacture one with the dimensions and materials you specify. Contact RDM to find out how we can make tables / workbenches that are a precise fit for your needs.