Endo Kogyo has been building industrial machinery in Japan since 1935. The company makes material handling equipment, power supply equipment and environmental machines, and Endo says its spring balancers are used by vehicle manufacturers in more than 30 countries to suspend welding guns, nutrunners and hand tools.

Endo's reputation rests on the spring. The balancers are built around a proprietary spring mechanism that holds its setting shift after shift, which is why they turn up on lines running three shifts a day for years at a time.

Which Endo series do you need?

Endo does not build one long capacity ladder. It builds separate series, each with its own capacity band and its own cable travel, so picking the right one means checking both what the tool weighs and how far it has to move.

• ERP series - 0.7 to 4.4 lb, 4.9 ft cable travel. Light assembly work: electric screwdrivers, small air tools, inspection equipment.
• EW and EWS series - 2.2 to 15.4 lb, 4.3 ft cable travel. The general-purpose bench and line balancers.
• EWF series - 10 to 265 lb, 4.3 to 6.6 ft cable travel. The workhorse range, and the one most plants standardise on.
• ELF series - 3.3 to 154 lb, 8.2 ft cable travel. The long-travel range.
• ETP series - 265 to 441 lb, 3.9 ft cable travel. Large welding guns and fixtures.

Two numbers to get right

Capacity is the total hanging weight - the tool, its accessories, and the length of hose or cable the balancer ends up lifting. Size on that, not on the tool alone. It has to sit inside the model's range.

Cable travel is how far the tool needs to move while you work: the distance from where it rests to where the operator's hand takes it, and back. Measure that movement, not how high the balancer hangs. If the balancer is mounted higher than the tool needs to reach, that is what an extension cable is for - it lowers the whole unit's working position without changing the travel. Buying more travel to cover a high mounting point is the wrong fix.

That is the choice between the EWF and the ELF. At the capacities where they overlap they carry the same load; the ELF simply pays out more cable, for work where the tool travels further.

The Endo product range includes

• Zero-gravity balancers, the standard spring balancers above, which hold the tool wherever you let go of it
• Hose balancers, with a hose in place of the wire rope, so the balancer carries the air tool and supplies it at the same time and no hose runs loose across the bench
• Retractors, which pull the tool back to a rest position instead of holding it in place
• Clean room balancers, for controlled environments
• Plastic drum balancers, where the plastic drum and unpainted casing produce fewer contaminants
• Food grade balancers, unpainted and running NSF H1 synthetic food grade grease

Ordering

You can order any Endo balancer through us, including anything above that you do not see listed. The Endo range is the place to start, and the Endo Spring Tool Balancers catalogue has the full model list.

Tell us the tool weight, everything hanging off it, and the drop from your mounting point to the work, and we will tell you the series and the size. Contact us at contact@toolbalancersusa.com or (978) 560-3775.