Conveyors in Industry
- Building site and rubble/aggregates
- Warehouse and logistics
- Waste Recycling
- Food Industry
- Industry, Manufacturing and processing
About conveyors
- Types of Conveyors
- Belts and belting
- Control Panels and PLC's
- Project Management
- Recent Examples
- Jaguar Bumber conveyor
- Overhead laundry sorter
- Sand and aggregates
- Waste and recycling
- Curves and bends
- Drag Conveyors
- Money Conveyor
- Hairpin bend
Other Information
Conveyor of the Month
December 2007
"The product has a high-gloss finish, must have minimum contact with the conveyor, and not be marked or smudged. You can't use a belt. Oh... and they come in different sizes....so the conveyor will need to expand and contract...
Well, they DO say that December is the Season of Miracles, but this design was a challenge.
The customer makes car bumper assemblies for a number of upmarket prestigious marques such as Jaguar, and have stringent quality controls imposed upon them. The requirement was a system to move painted assemblies from the painting robots to a quality control inspection area, onwards to a polishing area, and finally to their storage stillages.
The specification was that there must be minimal contact between the conveyor and the bumper assemblies, that the conveyor must not mark or smudge the assemblies in any way, and that it must be both variable height AND variable width (?) in order to accommodate a wide range of different assembly types.
Two of the tracks pushed together to form a conveyor
Our solution was to create a dual-track chain conveyor with independent drives. Each track of the conveyor is independently mounted on a mobile frame. By “pushing” two of these units together, you create the final conveyor system. Locking bars allow you to adjust the width between the two tracks, and hence the effective width of the conveyor.
Under test, carrying a Jaguar bumber
The product itself sits on thousands of metal ‘blades’. Each blade connects to the chain drive below (and is hence propelled down the length of the conveyor, finally disappearing ‘underneath’ the unit for the return trip). The upper surface of each blade – upon which the bumper assemblies sit – is a specialist silicone material that ensures that the assemblies are not marked.
This solution provides only a few square millimeters of contact between the carrying surface (the blades) and the bumper assemblies.
Video Clips
We have a few brief clips of the unit in action. You will probably need broadband to view these clips, and windows media player. You may also need to click on the 'play' buttons twice to start playback.| The unit under test, carring a Jaguar bumper assembly. |
| A close up of the 'blades' that actually carry the products. |