35 Years of Hydraulic Expertise  ·  Old-School Communication.  New-School Service.

978-368-3325
Balers · Baler · B-3

Your Bales Are Getting Lighter. That's Money Off Your Rebate.

Bale weight is the single best health indicator a vertical baler has. When it drops, the machine has lost force, lost stroke, or is being stopped early. And unlike almost every other fault, this one shows up on the revenue side of your books — lighter bales mean more bales per load and less weight per pickup.
Get the Pressure Checked — 978-368-3325
All Baler Symptoms
Tier 1 to weigh and time it. Tier 3 to adjust anything.
Start Here

Price It From Your Own Settlements

A compactor that loses force costs you extra hauls. A baler that loses force costs you tonnage on a material you are selling. That is a different and usually simpler calculation.

Find your average bale weight now.

From the recycler's settlement, or weigh a few bales if you have a scale.

Find what it used to be.

Same source, twelve months back. Settlements are the record most sites already have.

Work out bales per pickup, then and now.

Lighter bales mean more of them for the same tonnage — more handling, more ties, more floor space.

Multiply the tie cost by the extra bales.

Ties are the direct consumable cost of the fault.

Add the handling.

Every extra bale is moved, stacked and loaded by someone. That labour is real even when it is not invoiced.

The part that is easy to miss

If you are paid by weight for baled cardboard, light bales do not reduce your revenue per ton — but they do increase the number of bales, ties, handling movements and pickups needed to deliver that ton. The loss shows up in consumables and labour rather than in the commodity price.

Rule out the boring explanation first

Bale weight moves with what is being baled. A change in the cardboard mix, more film or foam, wetter material, or a new tenant sending different waste will all shift the number without anything being wrong with the machine.
Step Two

Confirm the Machine, Not the Material

Three checks, all Tier 1, all from outside the machine.

Watch where the platen stops on a full chamber.

Compare it to where it used to stop. A platen no longer reaching full down stroke is losing either force or travel.

Read the gauge at the end of the stroke.

Against the machine's rated pressure on the plate.

Time a full cycle.

A machine that got slower as well as weaker is losing flow and pressure together.

Notice when it stops on its own.

If the current limit is cutting the cycle early, the machine never reaches full force even though it can make it.

Narrowing It

Four Causes, Cheapest First

Current limit set low or failing

The CGE40-2P style current-sensing device ends the cycle at a set load. Set low or drifting, it stops the platen before the bale is made. Test and reset, or replace — the cheapest of the four.

Relief valve set low or worn

The hydraulic equivalent: pressure dumps before the machine reaches rating. Adjustment or cartridge replacement.

Pump losing efficiency

Less flow and less pressure. Usually arrives with longer cycle times.

Cylinder bypassing internally

Oil crossing the piston seal is force that never reaches the bale. Often comes with platen drift.
Why It Compounds

It Does Not Plateau

Consumables climb quietly

More bales means more ties, every week, and nobody flags it because the machine still works.

Floor space

Light bales stack up faster in a back room that had exactly enough space for the old bale count.

The underlying fault keeps working

Whatever is dumping pressure or bypassing oil is also making heat and wearing the pump while you absorb the bale count.
Before You Call

What Tells Us What You Have

A vertical baler is identified by make, model and serial off the plate, and that is usually enough for us to know the chamber size, the chain, the ties and the cylinder before we leave.
  • Make, model and serial — Off the data plate. A 3400HD and a V63HD are different machines and take different parts.
  • Bale size the machine makes — Nominal chamber width and depth, and typical bale weight.
  • Tie type and count — Wire, strapping or baling twine, how many per bale, and whether you supply them.
  • What it bales — Cardboard only, or mixed with film, shrink wrap or foam. It changes the wear pattern.
  • Bales per day — Duty is what decides whether a wear part is due or failing early.
  • Photos — The full machine, the chamber with the platen up, the data plate, and whatever is broken.

If the plate is unreadable

Retail balers spend years being pressure-washed and painted around. If the plate is gone, photograph the machine from the front and one side and we can usually identify it from the frame and the control layout.
Safety

Where Your Checking Stops

Tier 1 · Site check

Weighing bales, reading the gauge, timing a cycle, watching where the platen stops.

Tier 3 · Service technician

Current limit testing and adjustment, relief valve work, pump testing, and any cylinder work.

Do not crack a fitting to check for pressure

Stored hydraulic energy is the hazard that makes this Tier 3 no matter how simple the repair looks. Loosening a fitting “to see if there’s still pressure in it” is how people get injection injuries — which do not look serious for the first hour and are a surgical emergency. Pressure gets relieved deliberately and confirmed at the gauge.
Questions We Get

Light Bales, Answered

How much bale weight variation is normal?

Some, because the material varies. What matters is the trend at a similar material mix — a steady decline over months is a machine losing force, not a bad week of cardboard.

It happens, particularly when cardboard is stacking up and the machine is in the way of the job. If the machine reaches full pressure and full stroke when it is allowed to, that is a process problem rather than a repair.
Up to the machine’s design, yes. Past it, no — over-dense bales burst ties, jam in the chamber, bulge the chamber walls and are harder to eject. The target is the weight that machine was built to make.
Not on its own, but it narrows it quickly when paired with cycle time and gauge pressure. Those three numbers together usually decide what goes on the truck before we leave.
Get It Running

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978-368-3325

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Find us

T&T Weber Hydraulic Inc.
184 Stone St, Unit 5
Clinton, MA 01510

Where we go

Onsite compactor and baler service throughout New England — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Cylinder reseal and replacement, domestic replacement cylinders, hydraulic, electrical and controls, and full mechanical repair.