LUNA Maxi Length Stop, heavy duty design.

Product Report:

When Luna decided to design a new length stop it was as a result of a high demand from the Australian market to find a more durable and accurate solution to improve quality in the production environment.

Most Luna equipment is sourced from overseas and either fabricated for the Australian market or it is modified by Luna to suit Australians requirements in the use of the equipment and/or to meet the local safety standards. 

Luna looked at all the available products and established the short comings of the available products. It appeared that none of the existing products could be modified to satisfy what we established was required. 

Was it possible to design a length stop that would have all the desired features and would it being possible to fabricate this product for a reasonable price?

After one year of intensive computer design work and analysing work combined with a lot of producing prototypes and testing, the Luna engineers finalized what is now known as the Heavy Duty Maxi Stop.

This length stop is specifically designed to meet the requirements of our prime customers in the Aluminium fabricating industries.

What is different on the Maxi Stop to similar equipment?

One of the prime requirements is rigidity of the fence extrusion and the length stop slider design.

Australian operators are known to work the equipment hard and don’t take prisoners.

We have a lock at the fence extrusion if properly mounted on the conveyor or a table it will not budge for anybody. 

Like wise, the actual slider length stop part is designed to take a lot of abuse without complaint. The movable part of the length stop is designed to resist an attack with a mallet without moving.

In a traditional length stop one flag or flip stop is used. The disadvantage is that irrespectively of how the flip stop is mounted onto the slider-extrusion it will, if pushed, generate a bending moment at the mounting area that will eventually wear the mounting support and usually create a measuring discrepancy depending of how hard you push the flip stop.

The Luna Maxi Stop overcomes this problem by utilising what is called a double flip stop with a heavy linear connection of the flags. This design feature eliminates all bending moments on the flip stop and converts them into linear forces that are captured by the slider extrusion which in turn is located by the tapered fence extrusion.

The locking mechanisms features a long flat bar friction lock that in combination with the shape of the top section of the fence and the slider length stop extrusion locks tight with little force being applied to the locking lever.  Compared to other systems hand tight is adequate and no hammer is needed to lock the stop to prevent it from moving.

The long locking bar also prevents damage to the fence extrusion as the locking force is distributed over a large section.

The slider extrusion features special low friction plastic inserts that prevent the top of the fence extrusion from wear as this is a common problem on other systems.

The locking screw that is mounted in the slider locking bar is a high tensile screw. The locking screw is setup to engage into the locking lever utilising the full length of the thread in the brass ferule of the hand lever. This results in that the locking force is distributed over as much thread as possible reducing wear considerably. 

To be able to accurately read the cutting length we utilised a 19mm tape that can easily be replaced if it should be damaged (your nearest hardware store should have one). To make it easily readable we mounted an extra large magnifying lenes over the tape.

The measuring tape is usually stacked with double side tape into the tape slot after pre-calibration of the cutting length.

The lens is mounted movable so that fine calibration can be done be releasing the two mounting screws and moving the lense into the desired position.

If you require an absolute readout, in case your operator has a different opinion on how to read the tape or the eyes are just not what they used to be, the Luna Maxi Stop is designed so that a digital readout can be fitted without problem. The digital readout that we use provides an absolute positioning read out utilising a flexible measuring strip design featuring a stainless steel cover strip designed for hardy environment.

If you change your mind and you would like to mount the lengths stop on the other side of the saw – no problem all parts can be configured for left or right hand operation.

 If your work has changed and you need to cut longer lengths of Aluminium extrusions, no problem, you can easily extend your LUNA Maxi Stop. An extension of the fence extrusion fits easily onto your existing one. The fence extrusion can easily be fitted without an annoying step because the fence extrusions can be perfectly aligned with the help of a few roll pins.

This also enables you to setup the length stop with a second fast movable section that can be mounted onto a second conveyor in case you need the area to be clear for other reasons.

All LUNA Maxi Stop parts are interchangeable. If your application changes you can easily set up your Maxi Stop to cater for the new requirements.

The Maxi Stop has been designed to cater for pneumatic locking and automatic stop positioning. These features are presently not available but we look forward to introducing them to our product range at a later stage.

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