Conveyor systems can boost the efficiency of your distribution facilities, strengthen warehouse safety and significantly reduce labor costs.

Modern conveyors can move both individual cartons and entire pallets throughout your material handling system and they are an essential part of contemporary warehouse automation.

Conveyors can be grouped in three different classes for almost all material handling systems:

• Powered belt or roller conveyors (for carton handling)
• Powered chain or roller systems (for pallet handling)
• Non-powered conveyor systems

Powered Package Handling Roller or Belt Conveyors

Powered roller or belt systems are frequently used for less bulky pieces like cartons and packages.

Belt systems are usually used for moving cartons along a line, while roller systems are used for collecting packages in specific areas along the line.

Belt Conveyors

In use since the early 1900’s, conveyor belts are a fundamental part of many material handling systems. Less expensive than roller conveyors and frequently better suited to certain tasks like advancing lighter weight items, conveyor belts have a place in most material handling layouts.

Belt conveyors feature a long, looped belt that sits atop a series of non-powered rollers on a metal substructure called a slider belt. A motor drives a pulley that turns the belt and advances products down the conveyor line.

Belts can be made of a range of surfaces and materials according to the purpose and nature of the conveyor. For instance, a conveyor belt surface could be un-ridged in portions where cartons need to be pushed off the line and may have a ridged texture on segments where products have to be advanced up gradients.

Roller Conveyors

Despite the long and successful history of belt conveyors, newer roller systems offer a number of more useful benefits in many modern material handling applications.

Principal among these, roller systems can allow for accumulation of objects on the line where belt conveyors cannot. This is a meaningful distinction because there are countless scenarios where products must decelerate and accumulate in material handling configurations. Accumulation processes are often used when products must be paused before being passed to automated palletizers or sorters.

Advanced roller conveyors also have the ability to supervise objects on the line and utilize zero pressure accumulation, meaning none of the products collecting on the line directly touch as they slow down and finally stop.

Roller conveyors are made up of numerous cylindrical rollers that are generally set up in one of three different ways:

• Line-shaft conveyors: in a line shaft conveyor, a long tubular shaft runs beneath the cylinders perpendicular to them and is attached to each roller with rubber O-rings. A drive mechanism turns the shaft, and consequently turns the rollers via the connected O-rings. Line-shaft configurations are the most inexpensive of all roller setups, but they also require the most service because the O-ring connectors between the shaft and rollers tend to need adjustment and sometimes fail.
• Belt-driven roller conveyors: As you would surmise from the name, belt-driven roller systems are driven by a belt mechanism that sits beneath the roller platform. A motor drives the belt, which propels the rollers.
• MDR conveyors: Motorized roller conveyors, frequently called motor-driven roller (MDR) conveyors, are built in segments where only one roller from each section is driven by it's own motor. That solitary motor-driven cylinder is linked to the adjacent rollers in that section by way of flexible O-rings, and consequently rotates all the rollers in the segment. MDR sections are placed in succession to configure the conveyor line.
  MDR systems are known for their energy efficiency because: a.) they typically are powered by 24 volt DC motors and b.) the electric motors are set up to engage only when an object is detected on the cylinders, and as a result they are motionless much of the time.
  Although motorized roller conveyors cost more than belt drive and line-shaft systems, power expenses and service expenses are generally quite a bit lower than the other types of conveyors.
• Segmented belt conveyor: the design of motor driven roller conveyors ultimately inspired the birth of segmented belt conveyors. Similar to MDR conveyors, segmented belts operate independently and offer a lot of the same benefits of MDRs, including accumulation capacity.

Powered Pallet Handling Conveyors

Powered pallet-handling conveyors are quite often used with automatic palletizers and AS/RS setups. Pallet handling conveyors can usually handle loads of up to 4,000 lbs and operate at a much slower pace than carton handling conveyors, many times at speeds as low as four pallets per minute.

Pallet-handling conveyors come in two types: chain conveyors and roller conveyors.

• Pallet-handling chain conveyor: perhaps the most basic of all conveyor methods, pallets on a chain conveyor line are placed on top of segments of heavy duty chain. Motors propel the chain segments which consequently move the pallets down the line.
• Pallet-handling roller conveyor: somewhat like motor driven roller conveyors, pallet handling roller configurations use large cylinders and sturdy chains to link the powered roller to the remaining rollers in a conveyor section.

Non-Powered Conveyors

Roller or skatewheel conveyors are the most prevalent types of non-powered conveyors used in material handling. Non-powered rollers or skatewheels use gravity or inertia to move smaller items though warehouses, pick modules, automated sorters, workstations, package sorting areas and loading docks.

Skatewheel systems are made up of many individual wheels and require minimal energy to prolong the inertia of products as they progress along a conveyor line. In general, they propel products faster than non-powered roller systems and they have more adaptability when it comes to layout. Because they’re standalone wheels as opposed to a belt, they can be put to use in curved sections of a conveyor system.

Generally non-powered roller systems are less costly than skatewheel conveyor configurations. They’re frequently utilized for work stations, pick modules, and other zones where it’s useful to maintain a flat platform to work on. Roller systems may also be utilized to slow products down that are coming from higher speed mechanisms like sorters so that workers can keep pace with conveyor output.

Non-powered skatewheel and roller conveyors have a distinct disadvantage in comparison to powered systems: by employing gravity and inertia to move products you forgo the option to regulate the force applied to those products. Put another way, you have very little control of the speed and inertia of materials on your conveyor line.

Conveyor Companies Near Me

If you’d like a complete evaluation of conveyor system possibilities for your warehouse, distribution center or other material handling operation, speak with a professional at Associated.

The Associated Chicago service area includes Chicago, Aurora, Joliet, Naperville, Rockford, Springfield, Elgin, Peoria, Champaign, Waukegan, Cicero, Bloomington, Schaumburg, Evanston, Arlington Heights, Bolingbrook, Decatur, Skokie, Palatine, Des Plaines, Orland Park, Oak Lawn, Berwyn, Mount Prospect, Tinley Park, Wheaton, Normal, Oak Park, Hoffman Estates, Downers Grove, Glenview, Plainfield, Elmhurst, Lombard and all surrounding areas.

Associated | Chicago Material Handling Equipment Supplier

133 N Swift Rd
Addison, IL 60101
(630) 588-8800