All You Need to Know about Conveyors

When you hear the term conveyor in the material handling industry, you might easily turn to the conveyor belts. However, there might be some things that you need to learn more about this specific aspect of the manufacturing processes. For that, here is an overview of what are called conveyors.

First of all, the conveyor belt which can also be reversible as belt conveyor. This is a system that is made up of two pulleys or more that operates in a consistent loop, allowing the so-called to rotate incessantly. Both the belt and the material it holds are pulled forward as one or all of the pulleys are powered. In the mechanism, drive and idler pulley are used to call the powered and unpowered pulleys, respectively. While generally still meant for the material handling industry, the belt conveyor has two industrial classes in which it is divided; general material handling and bulk material handling. The difference lies on the type of materials that it handles. With the general material handling belt conveyors mainly operating for factory purposes while the ones for bulk material handling are meant for agricultural materials at most such as ores, grain and coal.

Now, you should know that when the term conveyor is used, it does not necessarily refer to the conveyor belt automatically. Instead, the conveyor belt is only a part of the broad subject that is the conveyor. The conveyor belt mainly refers to the surface in which the materials are loaded to be transported. Otherwise, these conveyor belts can also be used for driving rollers.

As for conveyors, these are typically devalued aspects in the manufacturing operations. It has several important terms under it that you may want to learn in order to call yourself a true professional in the field of material handling and distribution.

With the conveyor belt out of the way, first there is the slide bed conveyor.  These are conveyor systems that have belts slid over the bed. With its composition, it exhibits a bit of friction. This makes it highly suitable for handling materials that come in very light weights. Then, there is also the liver roller conveyor which makes use of power rollers in moving its load. These rollers can either be driven via belt – allowing the rollers to slip - or chain – allowing for a more positive traction.  

The roller bed conveyor, on the other hand, as the name easily suggests, has built-in rollers on the conveyor bed. This lessens the fiction produced since the conveyor belt moves over the rollers. Through this, you can expect to have more efficiency. At the same time though, you should be prepared for a significant investment since it tends to be more expensive than other conveyors. Last but not the least, there is also the gravity conveyor. As the name suggests, gravity plays a major part in the operation of this conveyor system.

Now, you have learned quite a bit more about conveyors. With that, you have understood more about the material handling industry.