Line utilities & layout
Will Your Building Take the Line? Measure Three Things First
The equipment is settled. What is open is your floor, your power, your air, your exhaust and the heights where two machines meet — read the numbers here straight onto your building drawing.
- Floor loadWill your slab hold it — and where's that number?
- Install spaceThe envelope you clear is bigger than the machine.
- Interface heightWhere one machine hands to the next, levels align.
Where to start
Measure These Three First
Three measurements carry most of the risk. Take them first; the rest of the page fills in the detail behind each.
Everything else on the page — power, compressed air, exhaust and environment — is what you confirm once these three fit.
Operating envelope
The Space to Clear Is Bigger Than the Machine
Lay a machine onto a drawing and you draw its outline. What you clear is larger — the machine plus room to stand, load and service around it.
Get it wrong and the fix is not small. A machine that fits by its outline but not by its envelope has to be moved after it lands — and this is a seven-tonne SML-S60 already bolted down, so the correction is a new location, not a nudge.
| Stringer | Body length | Install + operating space |
|---|---|---|
| SML-S60 | 8050 mm | 9000 × 3500 × 2800 mm |
| SML-S40 | 7850 mm | 8000 × 1800 × 2650 mm |
| SML-S15 | 6900 mm | 7000 × 2000 × 2500 mm |
Draw to the outer box
The envelope is the box that has to be clear before the crate arrives; the body is only what sits inside it. Lay your layout to the outer figure, not the machine outline. This is the equipment-side space only — building work and electrical installation are yours, set out further down.
The envelope isn't only the stringers' problem. The SML-A6 layup robot ships behind a safety door or fence, and that guarding takes floor space of its own — leave its clearance in the layout too, rather than drawing to the robot's body and finding the fence line lands in an aisle. The room a machine needs is the machine plus everything the machine has around it.
Clear the envelope you operate in — not the outline the machine ships as.
Floor load
Read the Floor Load — and Where That Number Lives
The shared condition is a floor load of ≥600 kg/m² on a flat, vibration-free floor. The harder part is knowing which drawing carries it and which slab it applies to.
- 1
Ask for the rated load of the exact bay
That figure lives in the structural design documents, not the floor-screed spec — the finished surface tells you nothing about what the slab beneath it is rated to carry. Ask your structural engineer for the rated live load of the bay where the machine stands.
- 2
Check the floor the machine sits on
On a multi-storey plant, check the floor the machine is on, not the ground slab. A heavy machine placed upstairs is the case most often missed, because the ground-floor rating is the one everyone quotes.
- 3
Spread the weight before you compare
A seven-tonne machine is not a point load. It spreads through its feet and supports, so what you check is the distributed area load under that footprint against ≥600 kg/m² — floor flat and free of vibration.
Where the number falls short, that is a structural conversation to have now, on the drawing — not after the machine is standing on it.
Site table
Footprint, Weight and Operating Space by Model
One table you can copy straight onto your building drawing — site numbers only. Performance and process parameters live on each machine's own page.
| Model | Footprint — body (mm) | Weight | Install + operating space (mm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SML-S60 | 8050 × 2800 × 2500 | 7000 kg | 9000 × 3500 × 2800 |
| SML-S40 | 7850 × 1600 × 2500 | 4500 kg | 8000 × 1800 × 2650 |
| SML-S15 | 6900 × 1800 × 2300 | 3000 kg | 7000 × 2000 × 2500 |
| SML-C72 | 4000 × 2700 × 2700 | 5000 kg | — |
| SML-C20 | 1000 × 650 × 1500 | 400 kg | — |
| SML-A6 | — | ~3 t | — |
The operating-space column governs your layout — the three stringers carry a published envelope, so read those to the outer figure. Where it reads —, the shared spec publishes no separate envelope: size the clearance from the footprint plus the operating access you keep around every machine.
Power
One Three-Phase Feed Won't Cover the Line
Most machines run on the shared feed — three-phase 380 V / 50 Hz, five-wire. The trap is assuming that one feed covers everything, because two machines don't sit on it.
SML-C20 scriber — 220 V single-phase. The scriber's power architecture is different; it won't start on a three-phase run.
SML-A6 layup robot — single-phase three-wire. The robot feeds differently again; the same three-phase assumption leaves it dead on power-up.
Wire the line as one three-phase run and, on power-up day, these two won't start on it — and adding a feed after the electrical work is finished means cutting into a completed floor. So mark those two on the electrical drawing separately and confirm each feed machine by machine, rather than taking one run as covering the whole line.
For sizing the runs you can carry the published inlets: SML-S60 at 4×16 + 1×10 mm², SML-S15 at 4×10 + 1×6 mm², and the SML-A6 at 3×6 mm². The rest is a per-machine check against your own single-line diagram, done before the conduit goes in the floor.
Compressed air
Compressed Air Is About Quality, Not Just Pressure
Pressure is the easy half — 0.6 to 0.8 MPa and you're there. What quietly causes trouble is air quality, and of the three grades the one to understand is the pressure dew point.
Miss it and moisture condenses inside the lines and valves; on pneumatic tooling that reads as unsteady motion — a fault that looks like the machine but is really your air. That is the mechanism to design against, ahead of any gauge.
Bring your compressed-air treatment up to all three at the source, and the air stops being a variable the line has to fight.
Air feed
The SML-S60 Needs Two Air Hoses at Once
Air gets plumbed like an afterthought — one drop, teed wherever a machine needs it. On the SML-S60 that assumption fails, so this is the one to design around.
The SML-S60 draws ≥1200 L/min through two φ16 hoses feeding at the same time. A single line teed into two doesn't meet that spec — the supply falls short and the pneumatic tooling starves, which surfaces as intermittent tooling faults rather than an obvious shortage. Run two hoses in parallel to the machine, not one split downstream.
The intake differs by machine, so size each drop to its own figure rather than a line default: the SML-S15 takes one φ16 at ≥600 L/min, and the SML-A6 a φ12 at ≥400 L/min. Set the compressed-air drops from these before the pipework is fixed, and no machine ends up fed through a line that can't keep up with it.
Exhaust
Exhaust Openings Belong on the Roof Plan
Exhaust gets forgotten until the machine is standing and the ducting has nowhere to go. Route it with the building — the opening count and flow change by machine.
The count is the part that drives the roof: the SML-S60 vents through three separate openings, so the structure needs three penetrations placed and sealed, and the duct has to gather all three to the combined flow. Plan the roof to the largest machine on the line, and the smaller ones sit inside that provision.
| Model | Top openings | Combined flow |
|---|---|---|
| SML-S60 | φ110 × 3 | >600 m³/h |
| SML-S40 | φ102 | >600 m³/h |
| SML-S15 | φ102 | >300 m³/h |
PVC ducting is suggested. Size the roof and duct runs to the largest machine's opening count and flow, and settle them on the roof plan before the structure closes — cutting a finished roof afterwards is the expensive way to find this out.
Water
The One Machine That Also Needs Water
Power, air and exhaust cover most of the line. One machine adds a fourth utility: the SML-C72 laser scriber runs on water — and water is not something you just tap off the mains.
At the cut, the scriber uses water-spray cooling to shrink the heat-affected zone. The cleave step then cools with deionized or pure water — not mains water — and a downstream heated belt dries the cells before they move on. The water isn't incidental; it's part of how that first, defect-setting cut stays clean.
So the question for your building is a threefold one — settle all three before the scriber ships, not after it's standing dry on the floor.
- 1
Which machine needs it
The SML-C72 laser scriber — the other machines on the line don't draw process water.
- 2
What kind
Deionized or pure water, held to a water quality, on a recirculation loop rather than a running tap.
- 3
Who prepares it
A treatment-and-discharge path you plan into the layout — the used water has to go somewhere.
Environment
The Environment Number That Matters Is "Non-Condensing"
The band is 5 to 40 °C and 5 to 70 % relative humidity. The words that carry the risk aren't the range — they are non-condensing.
In a humid workshop that touches its dew point, moisture forms on cells and tooling. On a cell that means oxidation and poor solder joints; the temperature and humidity numbers are just the box you keep the air inside so it never reaches that point. Design the room to stay clear of condensation, not merely inside the range.
- Hold the air non-condensing — that is the condition, above any single temperature or humidity reading.
- Keep the floor flat and vibration-free — it sits alongside the load rating as a placement condition, not a separate step.
Interface height
Where Two Machines Meet, Heights Have to Line Up
A string handed from stringing to layup crosses a fixed interface height. If a level doesn't match it, the handoff sits proud or low — and you're improvising a transfer table you never budgeted for.
The SML-A6 layup robot docks to the stringer at 1230 mm, with glass in-and-out feed at 950 ± 50 mm, loading on the short side and unloading on the long side. Treat those heights as the datum your building levels and machine settings align to, not a number you discover at install.
On the other side, the SML-S60's string out-feed can dock to a layup machine or run standalone — and docking needs that layup machine's height and dimensions supplied up front, so the two are set to meet before either is placed. Get the datum agreed on the drawing and the interface is a line item, not a surprise at commissioning.
A datum settled late is the expensive kind. Once the foundation is poured to one level and the machines are set to another, closing the gap means shims, a riser, or the transfer table you were trying to avoid — so fix the interface heights on the drawing, and the two machines are built to meet from the start.
Scope
What Sits on Your Side of the Line
Knowing which conditions are ours and which are yours keeps the layout honest — so no one assumes a turnkey scope that quietly includes the building.
You provideThe building and its civil work, the electrical installation, the overall line-layout drawing, and the plant and module-mounting scope around the equipment.
We provideThe equipment-side site and utility conditions — the numbers on this page — and our engineers install and commission the machines on your floor.
Read the two together and the handover is clear: we bring the machines and the conditions they need; the building that meets those conditions is yours to prepare. Where a condition on this page is tight against your building, that is the conversation to start now, while it is still a drawing.
Next step
Once You've Measured, Here's the Next Step
Measuring is most of the work; sending it in is quick. Three steps take you from a floor plan to a site-match reply.
You send your floor plan
Floor load, power, compressed air, exhaust — and your cell spec.
NowWe return a site-match view
Where your building fits, and where a condition needs attention.
Reply within 24 hoursYou confirm, we fold it in
Site conditions join the technical agreement, whose spec table is the acceptance standard.
After confirmationNothing here commits you — it turns a pile of building measurements into a clear read on whether the line drops in, or where it needs work first.
Get a site match
Send Your Floor Plan
Low-effort next step: send your floor plan and utility conditions, get a site-match reply within 24 hours.
Reply within 24 hours · by email.