There’s one piece of equipment the materials handling industry relies on to keep products moving and orders flowing, and that’s a conveyor. There are many types and uses of conveyors. For simple and quick transportation of a wide variety of products, the installation of a suitable conveyor can significantly increase production and prove to be a cost-effective investment.
Which type of conveyor is right for your specific environment will depend on a number of factors including:
- Type of material to transport
- Amount of workspace available
- Environment within the facility
- Speed of material throughput
- Fit with existing equipment
- Safety considerations
There are specialist companies like Axiom GB that will guide you through these initial evaluations to enable you to make the right decision. Getting design advice at an early stage from experienced engineers who work for a trusted brand will pay dividends, saving both time and money long-term. The two most commonly used conveyors are roller conveyors and belt conveyors.
Transportation made easy – conveyors use minimal effort to move maximum loads
Roller conveyor
Using parallel rollers mounted in frames, roller conveyors can be either unpowered or power-driven. Non-powered roller conveyors can be used to move product manually or by gravity.
Power-driven roller conveyors use individually powered rollers activated by sensors as items travel down the line. The conveyors are usually divided into different zones. With a zero line pressure (ZLP), conveyor product can be accumulated in a zone and will only move onto the next zone when there is space to do so. This alleviates the risk of damage as products never touch.
You can install accessories underneath the rollers. For example, steel pins can be raised between rollers to halt products, angled wheels can be raised to divert products or lift bars can rise between rollers to elevate products for a particular operation.
On a roller conveyor, there is low friction between the surface of rollers and the product.
This makes this type of conveyor ideal for merge points when the product transfers from one conveyor to another. It is also easy to push products onto this type of conveyor, or pull them off when loading or unloading.
Placing a packed order onto the roller conveyor at Lakeland
What is a Roller Conveyor used for?
Common uses of roller conveyors are in the materials handling industry for reliable transportation of totes, boxes, and pallets.
What is a belt conveyor?
A continuous flat belt in an endless loop between two pulleys, motors power up a belt conveyor. You can also choose a variety of belt material: rubber, plastic, or fabric.
It can be inclined (incline conveyor) or declined, depending on individual requirements, and troughed for use with bulk or large materials. You can also construct it as a twin-level conveyor in an automated inline packaging system; therefore, transporting products on one level and relevant documentation on the other. And a ‘beak point’ merges the two levels together.
‘Beak point’ to merge picked product with collateral on an Axiom inline packing cell
Belt conveyors provide full support and its common uses are to move a wide variety of items. For instance, they are particularly beneficial for transporting small items, fragile or irregular product shapes, and bagged materials. These types of conveyors are also a very good option to install for inclines and declines.
The best uses of a belt conveyor
Products travelling on a belt conveyor travel at a constant speed regardless of weight or shape. This makes them the ideal conveyor to use for gapping and tracking products. For example, common uses of conveyors are induction systems feeding into sortation solutions.
An automated conveyor increases productivity
Choose the right conveyor for your specific purpose and guarantee a significant increase in production whilst providing quick and easy transportation of diverse products.
Many conveyor systems are custom-designed, combining a number of different types of conveyors to fulfil a specific brief resulting in a totally automated system.
Whether you need a single conveyor or a more complex solution, choose your materials handling supplier carefully. Providing you do, the end result will be a quality conveying system that will complete your slow tasks fast whilst giving you an excellent return on your investment.
If you’re looking for a conveyor system and want to talk to a company with all the right credentials, contact Axiom GB for a consultation on +44(0)1827 61212 or email sales@axiomgb.com