Conveyors can boost the performance of your storage operations, enhance safety practices and substantially reduce human resource expenses.

Today's conveyor systems can transport both individual cartons and entire pallets within your warehouse and they are a fundamental component of contemporary warehouse automation.

Conveyors are classified in three separate divisions for most material handling systems:

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

Powered Package Handling Roller or Belt Conveyors

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

Belt systems are generally used for moving products along a line, while roller conveyors are employed for accumulating packages in certain areas along the line.

Belt Conveyors

Invented more than a century ago, conveyor belts are a fundamental part of many material handling systems. Lower cost than roller options and oftentimes better suited to specific functions like advancing lighter weight items, belt systems are used in many material handling designs.

Conveyor belts utilize a long, looped belt that is positioned on the top of 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 items down the conveyor line.

Belt systems can be configured with a variety of materials and surfaces depending on the purpose and nature of the conveyor. For instance, a conveyor belt surface may be totally flat in areas where cartons need to glide off the line and may have a ridged surface on segments where items must be advanced up inclines.

Roller Conveyors

Although belt conveyors are time-tested workhorses, newer roller conveyors offer a number of more useful benefits in many modern material handling uses.

First and foremost, roller systems can enable collection of items on the line where belt conveyors cannot. This is a critical contrast because there are endless scenarios where items must decelerate and accumulate in material handling applications. Accumulation processes are often used when items must be paused before being passed to automated palletizers or sorters.

Some roller conveyors also have the capacity to monitor items on the line and implement zero pressure accumulation, meaning none of the accumulating objects touch each other as they slow down and come to a stop.

Roller designs feature a series of cylindrical rollers that are generally set up in one of these ways:

• Line-shaft conveyors: in a line shaft system, a long metal rod runs beneath the rollers perpendicular to them and is joined to each cylinder with flexible O-rings. A motor spins the shaft, and thereby drives the cylinders by way of the connected O-rings. Line-shaft configurations are the least costly of all roller setups, but they may also need the most maintenance because the connections between the shaft and rollers need frequent readjustment and sometimes break.
• Belt-driven roller conveyors: As you may expect, these conveyors are driven by a belt that sits beneath the roller platform. A motor propels the belt, which propels the cylinders.
• MDR conveyors: Motorized roller conveyors, frequently called motor-driven roller (MDR) conveyors, are configured in sections where one roller from each segment is powered by it's own motor. That one motor-driven cylinder is linked to the others in that segment by way of flexible O-rings, and therefore rotates all the rollers in the segment. Powered 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 motors are set up to engage only when an object is present on the roller cylinders, meaning they are motionless much of the time.
  Although motorized roller conveyors cost more than line-shaft and belt drive rollers, electricity expenses and maintenance outlays are usually much lower than the other types of conveyors.
• Segmented belt conveyor: the principle of motor driven roller conveyors eventually led to the development of segmented belt conveyors. Similar to motor driven roller systems, segmented belts function individually and feature many of the same benefits of MDRs, including accumulation capacity.

Powered Pallet Handling Conveyors

Powered pallet-handling conveyors are frequently used with AS/RS systems and automatic palletizers. Pallet handling conveyors can typically deal with loads of up to 4,000 lbs and run at a far slower pace than package handling systems, many times at speeds of just a few 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 conveyors, pallets on a chain conveyor line sit directly on two or more lengths of heavy duty chain. A drive mechanism advances the lengths of chain which in turn advance the pallets along the line.
• Pallet-handling roller conveyor: analogous to MDR conveyors, pallet handling roller configurations use large cylinders and sturdy chains to connect the powered roller to the rest of the rollers in a conveyor unit.

Non-Powered Conveyors

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

Skatewheel conveyors are comprised of numerous independent wheels and require minimal power to prolong the inertia of items as they advance along a conveyor line. On the whole, they propel objects quicker than non-powered roller configurations and they have more flexibility when it comes to layout. Because they’re individual wheels in contrast to a belt, they may be used in curvilinear sections of a conveyor system.

Typically non-powered roller conveyors are less costly than skatewheel conveyor configurations. They are frequently utilized for work stations, pick modules, and other zones where it’s beneficial to have a flat platform to perform tasks. They may also be utilized to slow products down that are coming from higher speed systems like sorters so that employees can keep up with system performance.

Non-powered conveyors have a significant disadvantage as compared with powered systems: by employing gravity and inertia to move materials you lose the ability to directly manage the force applied to those materials. In other words, you don’t have influence on the inertia and speed of products on your conveyor line.

Conveyor Companies Near Me

If you’d like a complete evaluation of conveyor system options for your warehouse, DC or other material handling operation, talk to a professional at Associated.

The Associated Minneapolis service area includes Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester, Bloomington, Duluth, Brooklyn Park, Plymouth, Woodbury, Lakeville, Blaine, Maple Grove, St. Cloud, Eagan, Burnsville, Coon Rapids, Eden Prairie, Apple Valley, Minnetonka, Edina, St. Louis Park, Shakopee, Mankato, Moorhead, Cottage Grove, Maplewood, Richfield, Inver Grove Heights, Roseville, Andover, Savage, Brooklyn Center, Fridley, Ramsey, Chaska, Prior Lake, Oakdale, Rosemount, Elk River, Shoreview, Owatonna, Chanhassen, Austin and all surrounding areas.

Associated | Minneapolis Material Handling Equipment Supplier

8210 Courthouse Blvd Suite 100
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55077
(651) 688-6175