Crown Healthcare Laundry

The Softrol Systems Inc. sortation and material handling rail systems are an integral part of the new 86,000 sq ft Crown Healthcare Laundry facility in Lakeland, Florida. Working with wash aisle and finishing equipment provided by Pellerin Milnor and Chicago Dryer, Softrol provides an industrial strength solution with state-of-the-art technology.

Starting with two high-speed cart dumpers, soiled linen is conveyed through a Softrol high-volume sortation deck. Unsorted items move on to a low-volume sortation belt. High volume bags advance directly to soiled storage, while the low volume bags are paired with like items before entering the final soiled storage area.

DataFusion, a Softrol/Milnor interaction, provides a seamless communication to handle laundry transfer and to hand-off load and process code information between the wash/dry systems and the Softrol rail. Control of the rail system is distributed into four main sections, sort/soil/dryer/clean, to provide a separation for ease of use and maintenance.

Using our latest DRX embedded processor, this control system is extremely powerful and high-speed. Touchscreens display the rail layout, to scale, and include Pan and Zoom technology to view detailed data for trouble shooting, item by item.

Softrol’s unique use of rail twisters provides Crown Healthcare Laundry with a very tight footprint. Rail twisters help to limit the space required for the entire material handling system, both horizontally and vertically. This unique design allows rails to cross without changing elevation and provides space saving 90-degree turns at the sortation load stations and elsewhere.

After the press, clean laundry bags are sent directly to clean storage or to an isolated dryer bank for conditioning. Loading clean laundry into bags after the press gives Crown a buffer zone of work on the Softrol rail between the tunnel and the isolated dryer bank, so that, a slow-down at the dryers does not impede the wash process.

Finally, the finishing call-off operator calls for bags to automatically exit clean storage and to disperse into the finishing area, where needed. Operators initiate the bad drops at each drop station.

We congratulate Crown Healthcare Laundry on their new facility. It was a pleasure working with all involved and we’re very happy to be part of such a successful project.