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
- 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
The Drag Conveyor
Usefull for moving fine powders, clinker, aggregates etc from underneath forges et al.
A detail shot showing the two parallel chains being driven by the sprockets.
A detail shot of the sweeper blades.
Drag Conveyors
With a conventional belt conveyor, it is possible for materials to fall off the belt and onto the floor, or to work their way into the interior of the conveyor and cause problems. This is particularly true of fine powders, or materials such as sand.
Well, floors can be swept, and conveyors cleaned. But what happens if the conveyor is in such a position that it is impossible to access for cleaning, or to sweep up around it ?
Enter the Drag Conveyor.
Usually, conveyors carry material on their upper surface. The belt then disappears ‘underneath’ the upper surface for its return journey.
In the case of the Drag Conveyor, the logic is somewhat reversed. Sand and powder fall through the conveyor into an enclosed channel. Rather than trying to ‘carry’ this material, the conveyor instead has a series of ‘blades’ or ‘paddles’. These do nothing as they travel along the upper half of the conveyor. On the ‘return’ leg, however, they now push the waste material along the channel, and out into a stillage or waste container.
Because the waste material is trapped in the channel, it cannot ‘fall’ anywhere, nor escape the motion of the travelling ‘blades’, and hence all of it is captured by the stillage, and none of it can accumulate inside the conveyor system.
The example pictured here was to fit underneath a castings machine, and to collect sand and castings waste as they fell through the ‘bottom’ of the machine. As it is impossible to clean under the machine, it was important that no waste material could ‘accumulate’.
The ‘blades’ sit between, and are attached to, two parallel chains, which in turn wrap around two sprockets on a common powered axle. This gives a very high degree of traction and power, with no possibility of slippage.
The design is inherently simple and robust, giving long lifetimes and low maintenance costs.