Flipper Tower Assemblies, sometimes referred to as Stacking Columns, are fully assembled modules that are shipped ready to be bolted into the floor of a shipping rack or in-process cart.  They consist of a complete array of vertical style pivoting flipper fingers mounted within a steel weldment via shoulder bolts or machined pivot rods.  The Tower Assembly will also include any required locking mechanisms, panel containment guides, special bumpers or any other feature that needs to be mounted onto the weldment housing.  The weldments and other steel components can be zinc plated or powder coated per customer specifications.

We can design Flipper Tower Assemblies for manual, lift-assisted or robotic loading and unloading of panels.  Counterweights and other features are included within the flipper finger for purposes of automatically actuating the next flipper to accept another part for loading and automatically moving the empty flipper out of the way to provide proper clearance for unloading the next panel.

Most designs feature a straight vertical orientation of flipper fingers positioning the panels directly above each other in a uniform stack.  We also design Flipper Tower Assemblies in a slanted orientation if having the panels offset is required due to the shape of the panel.  Less common is a curved flipper orientation design in which the panels are held in a “fan” style with one end requiring more part to part spacing clearance than the opposite end.

Flippers themselves are injection molded polycarbonate alloy which is a strong, rigid recyclable thermoplastic resin.  Depending on the application, the flippers can be fitted with injection molded recyclable thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) heads to make cushioned contact with class-A surfaces of the panels or can include a stainless steel cover to prevent shaving of the plastic flipper from a sharp steel edge of the panel.