Vidir Wire Carousel Case Study: VC999 Packaging Systems, North Kansas City, Missouri
How a packaging machinery manufacturer put its wire and cable reel inventory into one 17-foot motorized wire spool carousel with 30 wire bays.
Customer
VC999 Packaging Systems, Inc.
Location
419 E. 11th Avenue, North Kansas City, MO 64116 (Clay County)
Product
Vidir Wire Carousel, Model W45203-1040-06 — 10 carriers, 30 wire bays
Application
Motorized vertical storage of wire and cable spools for packaging machine build
About the project
VC999 Packaging Systems, Inc. builds vacuum packaging and thermoforming machinery at 419 E. 11th Avenue in North Kansas City, Missouri, in Clay County just across the river from downtown Kansas City. The company is the North American arm of VC999, a packaging machinery manufacturer with more than 50 years in vacuum packaging; the Kansas City plant is responsible for the group’s rollstock thermoformer line, and the wider company is publicly reported to employ well over a hundred people across several countries.
Machines like that are wired by hand. A thermoformer is a large stainless assembly full of drives, sensors, heaters, pneumatics and control panels, and every one of those subsystems needs cable cut to length from a spool: control wire in several gauges and colors, sensor cable, shielded cable, machine harness wire, ground wire. A build floor that turns out custom machines carries a long stocked wire list and pulls from it dozens of times a day.
Material Handling USA supplied one Vidir Wire Carousel — a motorized vertical carousel whose carriers are enclosed wire bays, Model W45203-1040-06 — for the North Kansas City plant, together with a track-mounted wire merchandiser and a wire spinner spool. This is the tall W45 machine: 17’9" overall height, 10 carriers and 30 individual wire bays, sized for spools up to 30" in diameter.
This project sits behind our vertical storage for manufacturing page and is part of the Vidir vertical storage line. Packaging equipment for food processors also puts this machine close to our grocery and cold chain storage work, and the same platform is used heavily on the distribution side of the wire business — see vertical storage for electrical supply and wire distribution.
Project scope at a glance
The situation
Wire on a machine-build floor behaves nothing like wire in a warehouse. Pulls are small, constant and specific: a few feet of one color for a sensor run, twenty feet of another for a panel, then back to the first. What matters is not throughput but the ability to get to any one of dozens of spools instantly, without disturbing the rest.
Static wire reel racks do the opposite as they fill up. Spools go two and three deep, so the one an assembler wants is behind the one they do not; spools come off the rack, land on the floor and go back in the wrong position. Similar gauges and jacket colors end up mixed. Large-diameter spools have to live on the lowest shelves because nobody can lift them higher, which is also where they are hardest to spin freely. And the rack can only be as tall as a person can safely reach, so it grows sideways along a wall and takes a working aisle with it — floor that a machine shop would rather give to assembly bays.
A wire carousel reverses all of that. Every spool sits on its own rod in its own labeled bay, the operator calls the carrier they need, and the machine rotates it down to one opening at working height. Storage goes up 17 feet instead of along a wall, heavy 30-inch spools are brought to the operator rather than lifted, and the pick face never moves.
What Material Handling USA supplied
Material Handling USA supplied one Vidir Wire Carousel, Model W45203-1040-06: a freestanding powered carousel 17’9" high, 8’11" wide and 7’3" deep, with ten W45 wire-bay carriers, uprights with a 2" wire mesh front and a corrugated sheet metal back, and a front control tower.
Each carrier is divided into three wire bays — 30 bays in total — measuring 26.25" wide by 32.5" high. The taller W45 bay is the reason to choose this platform: it accepts spools up to 30" in diameter, which covers the larger machine-harness and multi-conductor cable reels that will not fit a 24" bay. Spools mount on wire bay rods, and the machine shipped with twenty 0.75" standard-duty rods and thirty-four 1" heavy-duty rods; mixing rod diameters is what lets a plant re-cut a bay later for narrower or wider spools without modifying the machine.
Capacity is rated at 13,000 lbs overall with a 12,023 lb live load, and up to 1,000 lbs on any single carrier — the full 1,000 lbs average across all ten carriers, so the machine can be loaded with full spools top to bottom rather than only light remnants at height.
Controls are deliberately simple for a production floor: forward/reverse push-button rotation on a fixed-speed drive, carriers moving at up to 21 feet per minute, driven by two 1.5 HP motors, with a mushroom E-stop, a main power disconnect and a security keypad at the front control tower. Power is 208V, three-phase, 15 amp. The machine anchors to the slab with 5/8" HILTI KB-TZ stud anchors through 10.5" x 6" foot plates, and the finish is VM White Textured on both the machine and the carriers, with a two-year manufacturer parts and labor warranty.
Machine-level details for the platform live on our Vidir Wire Carousel page, and the full option list is on the vertical carousel accessories and options page.
Full product specifications
Below is the published product specification for the machine supplied to North Kansas City, taken from the Vidir specification sheet for this configuration. A carousel is a manufactured product, so these are the numbers used to confirm it would clear the ceiling, fit the wall and carry the spool weights.
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Model | W45203-1040-06 |
| Product type | Wire Carousel (vertical carousel) |
| Overall height | 17′ 9″ |
| Overall width | 8′ 11″ |
| Overall depth | 7′ 3″ |
| Overall weight capacity | 13,000 lbs |
| Live load capacity | 12,023 lbs |
| Carrier type | W45 wire bay |
| Total carriers | 10 |
| Total wire bays | 30 |
| Wire bay dimensions | 26.25″ W x 32.5″ H |
| Maximum spool diameter | 30″ |
| Maximum weight per carrier | 1,000 lbs |
| Average capacity per carrier | 1,000 lbs |
| Standard-duty wire bay rods | (20) 0.75″ rods |
| Heavy-duty wire bay rods | (34) 1″ rods |
| Drive system | (2) 1.5 HP motors |
| Electrical | 208V, 3-phase, 15 amp |
| Controls | Forward/reverse push button, front control tower |
| Drive configuration | Fixed speed |
| Control options | Mushroom E-stop, main power disconnect, security keypad |
| Max. retrieval speed | 21 ft per minute |
| Guarding | Uprights, 2″ wire mesh front, corrugated sheet metal back |
| Foot plate dimensions | 10.5″ D x 6″ W x 0.375″ H |
| Concrete anchors | 5/8″ HILTI KB-TZ stud anchor |
| Finish | VM White Textured (300-1106), machine and carriers |
| Warranty | 2 years parts and labor (manufacturer) |
| Included | English technical documentation, Vidir decal |
Merchandiser and payout hardware
Two options went out with this machine, and both are about what happens at the pick opening rather than inside the tower.
The track-mounted wire merchandiser rides on the machine and presents wire at the opening so it can be pulled off cleanly by one person, instead of an assembler wrestling a spool out of a bay to get at the free end. On a build floor where the same spool is visited many times a shift, that is the difference between a machine people use as designed and a machine people work around.
The wire spinner spool is the loading-side counterpart: a spinner assembly that lets a spool turn freely as wire is drawn, so heavy reels pay out smoothly without kinking the conductor or fighting the operator.
Vidir also builds hanger meter sliders, which measure wire as it is drawn off at the opening, and wire loading dollies for getting full spools on and off the rods as a one-person job. Neither was part of this order, and both are worth deciding on up front: adding payout hardware later means a second freight bill. The full list is on our vertical carousel accessories and options page.
Site and power requirements
Vidir’s terms of sale set out what the receiving plant has to have ready for a machine of this size, and the list is a useful planning checklist for anyone putting a wire carousel into a working production building:
- Power at the machine. 208V, three-phase, 15 amp, with the building wiring and the final connection to the machine provided by the site, and power live while the crew is present for testing and demonstration.
- A forklift and a scissor lift on site. The customer provides both for unloading and erection unless other arrangements are made in writing; a 17-foot machine is assembled standing up, not laid over.
- A level, troweled slab. Vidir specifies a floor flat within 1/2", not less than 6" thick, at 3,500 psi or better, and the customer confirms the slab or footings under the machine columns will carry the loads. Sloped floors, pits and tight install areas add cost.
- Clear access and a clear footprint. Paved access, dock availability and an unobstructed route for the sections, plus an install area cleared of racking and material so a lift can work around the machine.
- Anchoring. The machine is bolted down with 5/8" HILTI KB-TZ stud anchors through its foot plates.
Our vertical storage installation services page carries the full site checklist, including the ceiling, power and access questions worth answering before a machine is ordered.
What the plant gained
Wire carousel or static wire reel rack?
| Vidir Wire Carousel (used here) | Static wire reel rack | |
|---|---|---|
| Floor footprint | One 8’11” x 7’3″ footprint | Runs along a wall plus a clear working aisle |
| Height used | 17’9″ of vertical storage | Limited to safe manual reach |
| Bay count | 30 labeled bays at 26.25″ x 32.5″ | As many positions as wall length allows |
| Largest spool | Up to 30″ diameter on any carrier | Large reels restricted to low shelves |
| Spool handling | Spools stay on rods inside the machine | Manual lift on and off the rack |
| Retrieval | Carrier rotates to one opening at working height | Walk the rack, reach or climb |
| Wrong-part risk | One spool per labeled bay | Spools stored two and three deep |
| Access control | Enclosed mesh, keypad on the control tower | Open rack |
| Best for | A varied wire list picked many times a day | A handful of spools and low turnover |
The vertical carousel vs. traditional storage page applies the same comparison to parts and supplies, and our tool crib, die and mold storage page covers the other consumables a machine shop usually wants behind a keypad.
How to specify a wire carousel for a machine shop
Start with the wire, not the machine. List every spool type you stock, the largest spool diameter and width and the weight of a full spool. Those numbers set the bay size, the rod diameter and the carrier rating. Here the deciding number was spool diameter: the W45 bay at 26.25" x 32.5" takes reels up to 30", where the smaller W39 bay stops at 24".
Then measure the building, because the building picks the model. The same family is built in several heights on close to the same footprint: a 7-carrier W39 machine needs only 10’9" of clear height, a 13-carrier W39 runs 19’3", this 10-carrier W45 stands 17’9", and the tallest W45 machines reach 21 feet. Check clear height under sprinklers, lights, conveyor and any crane runway, a level slab that will take 5/8" stud anchors, an unobstructed route to bring sections in, and 208V three-phase 15 amp power at the machine.
Decide the payout hardware up front. A track-mounted merchandiser and a spinner spool, both supplied here, are what make a tall machine comfortable to use all day; meter sliders and loading dollies are the other two options worth pricing in the same order.
For the same wire-carousel platform in other plants, see Lin Engineering in Morgan Hill, California (a 12-foot, 24-bay machine on a motor production floor), BTECH Inc in Rockaway, New Jersey and LeeBoy in Lincolnton, North Carolina. On the distribution and utility side, compare Tucson Electric Power, IES Residential, Duro Electric and, for large cable drums instead of spools, World Electric Supply; aerospace and defense examples are ABL Space Systems and BAE Systems. For taller or highly variable loads compare a vertical lift module, and for budget ranges start with the vertical storage cost and pricing guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is a wire spool carousel?
How many wire spools does this machine hold?
Is a wire carousel better than a wire reel rack?
How big a spool will it take?
How much floor space does it use?
Can wire be measured or paid out at the machine?
What does the site have to provide for installation?
Do you supply wire carousels to manufacturers in Missouri and Kansas?
Wire reels spread along a wall of your build floor?
Send us your spool list — largest diameter, spool widths and full-spool weights — plus your clear ceiling height, and we will size a Vidir Wire Carousel with the bay layout, payout hardware and installation scope your plant needs.