Conveyors can boost the productivity of your distribution facilities, enhance safety and significantly reduce labor costs.

Modern conveyors can transport everything from heavy pallets to small packages within your facility and they are an essential component of contemporary warehouse automation.

Conveyors can be grouped in three distinct divisions for the vast majority of material handling configurations:

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

Powered Package Handling Roller or Belt Conveyors

Powered roller or belt conveyors are generally used for smaller items like cartons and packages.

Belts are usually employed for moving cartons along a line, while rollers are used for accumulating products in certain areas along the line.

Belt Conveyors

Used since the beginning of the 20th Century, conveyor belts are a fundamental part of many material handling systems. Less expensive than roller conveyors and often more appropriate for certain tasks like advancing lighter weight products, conveyor belts have a place in most material handling layouts.

Conveyor belts feature a long, looped belt that rides a metal slider belt substructure or an array of non-powered rollers. A motor drives a pulley that turns the belt and advances items down the conveyor line.

Belts can be made of a variety of surfaces and materials depending on the purpose and role of the conveyor. To illustrate, a belt surface could be perfectly smooth in areas where products need to be pushed off the line and may have a ridged surface on segments where products must be moved up gradients.

Roller Conveyors

Although belt conveyors are time-tested workhorses, newer roller systems offer a set of advantages in many modern material handling applications.

Most importantly, roller systems can enable accumulation of objects on the line where belt conveyors cannot. This is a critical contrast because there are endless scenarios where objects must hold and accumulate in material handling designs. Accumulation is often necessary when products must be paused before being forwarded to automated palletizers or sorters.

Some roller systems also have the ability to monitor objects on the line and utilize zero pressure accumulation, meaning none of the accumulating objects directly touch as they slow down and finally stop.

Roller conveyors feature a series of cylinder rollers that are generally set up in one of three different ways:

• Line-shaft conveyors: in a line shaft system, a long metal shaft runs underneath the cylinders perpendicular to them and is connected to each roller with rubber O-rings. A motor rotates the shaft, and thereby rotates the rollers via the connected O-rings. Line-shaft conveyors are the most inexpensive of all roller style conveyors, but they may also need the most repair because the O-ring connectors between the rollers and the shaft need frequent readjustment and occasionally break.
• Belt-driven roller conveyors: As you would surmise from the name, belt-driven roller systems are driven by a belt mechanism that lies underneath the roller platform. A motor powers the belt, which propels the cylinders.
• MDR conveyors: Motorized roller conveyors, sometimes referred to as motor-driven roller (MDR) conveyors, are set up in sections where one roller from each section is driven by it's own power source. That solitary powered cylinder is linked to the adjacent rollers in that section via rubber O-rings, and consequently rotates all the cylinders in the segment. Powered segments are placed in succession to configure the conveyor line.
  MDR conveyors are very energy efficient for a couple of reasons: a.) they usually run on 24 volt DC motors and b.) the motors can be configured to run only when an object is present on the rollers, meaning they are idle throughout much of the day.
  Although MDR conveyors are more expensive than line-shaft and belt drive systems, energy expenses and maintenance expenses are usually far lower than the other options mentioned.
• Segmented belt conveyor: the design of motor driven roller conveyors eventually begat the development of segmented belt conveyors. Similar to MDR conveyors, segmented belts function independently and offer several of the same benefits of motor driven rollers, including accumulation capabilities.

Powered Pallet Handling Conveyors

Powered pallet-handling conveyors are quite often coupled with palletizers and automatic storage and retrieval systems. Pallet handling conveyors can usually accommodate loads of up to 2 tons and proceed 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 rudimentary of all conveyor methods, pallets on a chain conveyor line sit directly on two or more lengths of heavy duty chain. Motors propel the lengths of chain which in turn advance the pallets along the line.
• Pallet-handling roller conveyor: somewhat like MDR conveyors, pallet handling roller configurations use larger rollers and sturdy chains to connect the powered cylinder to the rest of the rollers in a conveyor segment.

Non-Powered Conveyors

Skatewheel or roller systems are the conventional types of non-powered conveyors used in typical warehouse operations. Non-powered rollers or skatewheels use gravity or inertia to advance smaller products though pick modules, warehouses, workstations, automated sorters, package sorting areas and loading docks.

Skatewheel systems are comprised of numerous separate wheels and require minimal power to maintain the inertia of items as they advance along a conveyor line. In general, they propel objects faster than non-powered roller conveyors and they have more versatility when it comes to layout. Because they’re separate wheels in contrast to a belt, they may be used in curvilinear sections of a conveyor system.

In general non-powered roller conveyors are less expensive than skatewheel conveyor configurations. They are often used for work stations, pick modules, and other areas where it’s useful to have a level surface to work on. Roller systems are also used to slow products down that are coming from faster moving mechanisms like sorters so that workers can keep up with system output.

Non-powered systems have a serious liability in comparison to powered conveyors: by using inertia and gravity to move products you forgo the option to directly manage the force applied to those products. Simply put, you have minimal influence on the inertia and speed of products on your line.

Conveyor Companies Near Me

If you’d like a full analysis of conveyor system possibilities for your warehouse, DC or other material handling operation, contact a professional at Associated.

The Associated Indianapolis service area includes Indianapolis, Evansville, Fishers, Bloomington, Carmel, Lafayette, Greenwood, Terre Haute, Muncie, Kokomo, Anderson, Westfield, Jeffersonville, Columbus and all surrounding areas.

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