QSMT1000 Pallet Free Block Machine Price: Pallets You Skip

QSMT1000 pallet free block machine price is a two column number, and most buyers read only the first. The invoice column carries a forming head with a cross-cubing stacker built onto it, rated at 135,000 bricks of 240 × 115 × 50 mm in an eight hour shift, stacked wet to 1,100 mm in 10 layers. The second column is the plant you never build: no pallet array, no pallet feeder, no return conveyor, no cuber that lifts a board.

Set that against the pallet route. The QST1500 runs a 1,350 × 1,150 × 30 mm pallet and the QST1800 a 1,400 × 1,400 × 30 mm pallet, and every one of those plates has to be bought, fed, returned, cleaned and replaced. The question is not which route is more modern. It is which line items sit on your quotation for the next five years, and where the two columns cross.

What leaves the quotation when the pallet leaves the line?

Start with the hardware. A pallet line needs a feeder to place empty boards under the mould, a return conveyor to bring them back, and a cuber that lifts the board with the stack. Our QS-1200 feeder holds three stacks of pallets, runs a 13 second cycle and draws 3 kW. The QS-1000G-B cuber handles 2,000 pallets a shift at 15 to 18 seconds a layer and draws 29 kW. On the QSMT1000 both jobs happen inside one frame.

Now add the power. The QST1500 press draws 69.1 kW, and on a pallet line the feeder and the cuber add their own motors on top of that, so the number you compare is the installed load of the whole configuration, not the press alone. The QSMT1000 draws 57.5 kW and covers forming and cubing together on a frame of about 12,000 kg. Line up the installed loads before you line up the machine prices, or the pallet offer looks smaller than it is.

The bill you stop paying: 1,600 pallets a shift

Take the QST1500 inside its 15 to 23 second band at 18 seconds: 200 cycles an hour, so 1,600 pallets in an eight hour shift. Each of those pallets must come back to the feed position empty, which means a pallet line also runs 200 empty return movements an hour, 1,600 a shift, every shift. The QSMT1000 runs a 13 to 18 second moulding cycle on one pallet, the machine's own base, and never sends a board back.

The pallet does real work, and that is why it costs. On the QST1500 it takes 220 kN of vibration force and carries a green block to the yard. The QSMT1000 forms at 150 kN and stacks the wet block where it stands, so the stack itself, 10 layers to 1,100 mm, becomes the handling unit and the return trip disappears with it.

What does a two day cure do to the pallet count?

The fleet is a multiplication, not a purchase order: pallets an hour times hours times cure days. At 200 pallets an hour, one shift a day and a two day cure you own 3,200 pallets before the yard holds a single spare. Each is 1,350 × 1,150 mm, about 1.55 square metres, so laid one layer deep that fleet covers roughly 4,960 square metres of floor. Two shifts a day double it to 6,400 pallets and near 9,920 square metres.

That multiplication is why the price comparison has to start here. The QSMT1000 breaks it at the first term: no pallet per cycle means no fleet, no cure day multiplier and no yard reserved for boards.

What you pay more for: the cubing head and a narrower mix window

Read the pressure figures before you read the premium. The QSMT1000 is rated at 21 MPa and the QST1500 at 31.5 MPa, so the extra spend did not go into tonnage. It went into a head that cross-cubes 10 wet layers to 1,100 mm across a 1,150 × 1,100 mm moulding area, and into pressure control that holds each layer square before the next lands on it.

The price of that head is a narrower mix window. A wet stack has no board under it, so green strength has to come from grading, moisture and a vibration band between 3,200 and 4,600 times a minute that does not drift across the shift. A dust heavy crushed sand mix that runs all day on pallets will need moisture control and a slower start on this machine.

Then the skill. The machine diagnoses itself and shows the suggested remedy, which is worth little without one technician who reads the pressure trend and the fault text on the same screen. Staff the head, not only the shift.

At what output does the pallet fleet outgrow the mechanism?

The crossover is a count, not a hunch. One shift a day with a one day cure leaves 1,600 pallets in circulation, and the premium on the cubing head is hard to defend at that size. Three shifts a day with a three day cure leaves 14,400 pallets in circulation, each passing the machine once per cure, and the fleet becomes the largest line item in the plant after the machine itself. The pallet route grows with every shift you add. The QSMT premium stays where it was quoted.

There is a product boundary on top of the arithmetic. The QSMT series takes standard solid bricks, porous bricks and small unfired blocks. A 390 × 190 × 190 mm hollow block, and anything with a face you sell on appearance, stays on a pallet. If face work is more than half your order book, the crossover never arrives.

Which line item overtakes in year five?

Pallet retirement. Nobody straightens a bent 30 mm plate well enough to form on, so a pallet is consumed by use and not by age. Count the pallets you retired in the last four quarters and multiply by four: that is the annual purchase the QSMT1000 deletes, and it repeats every year the line runs. Add the return work, 200 empty movements an hour, which is a person and a forklift tied to a loop that no longer exists.

The mechanism premium is one payment; the pallet spend is a subscription. Year five is where the two cumulative lines meet on a plant running two or three shifts with a slow cure. It is also where the pallet route starts arguing about repair labour rather than pallet supply. If you already hold a fleet with years of life in it, years one to three favour the pallet machine, and that is the honest answer rather than the sales one.

Six lines to put in both enquiries

The two offers become comparable once the same lines are stated in the same units.

• Fleet count: pallets an hour times shifts times cure days, written as one number and not as a range.
• Stack figures: 10 layers to 1,100 mm on the QSMT1000 against the stack height your cuber builds, both in millimetres.
• Installed power: 57.5 kW for the QSMT1000 against press, feeder and cuber added together on the pallet line.
• Product list: which of your current items the wet stack can hold and which must stay on boards.
• Retirement history: pallets scrapped in the last four quarters, with the reason recorded for each batch.
• Handling after cubing: 500 to 800 bricks per clamp bite at 10 layers, or a stack a forklift can enter.