Smarter, Safer and more Sustainable Conveyor Belts

Smart conveyors have become an essential part of the manufacturing and shipping world and have created an opportunity for fast growth, more efficiency, and increased productivity. 

Smart conveyors are projected to be a growing industry, with the technology expanding quickly across all sectors. Smart conveyors use precision motion and innovative technologies to optimize and improve industries, making them a popular choice across manufacturing.

Belt conveyor transport is currently one of the most important systems in any production line. In order to facilitate its reliable operation, belt manufacturers continuously carry out research that is targeted at various types of problem areas. Presently, priority areas of research include issues related to automation of individual processes, predictive maintenance and efficient operation.

Direct Drive Technology

Conveyors capable of precision motion play key roles in food manufacturing. A product might need to be stopped in front of an X-Ray machine for inspection, for example, or presented to a robotic arm as part of a pick-and-place operation. Motion control systems can position parts accurately, rapidly, and repeatably.

Although conventional gearmotors operating closed loop can deliver the fast, precise motion required for industrial applications, they aren’t necessarily the optimal solution. Footprint is always critical in the industrial environment, whether on the factory and warehouse floor or within the machine itself. The combination of motor, gearhead, coupling, and feedback consumes a significant amount of space while adding cost, maintenance, and points of failure. The approach can also impact performance. Gearheads can introduce backlash. The coupling that connects the motor shaft with the load can introduce compliance and wind up, decreasing responsiveness and accuracy. Direct-drive motors provide an alternative.

In a direct-drive motor, the motor itself is part of the system. Instead of the motor shaft interfacing with the drive wheel of the conveyor via a coupling, the motor shaft is the axle of the drive wheel. The approach eliminates compliance while maximizing torque. It also supports greater degrees of design freedom, particularly in the case of frameless direct-drive motors. Frameless motors arrive as unhoused rotor and stators which can be built into the conveyor, either at the ends of rollers or inside the roller. 

Updating Motors

Introducing modern motors into a food and beverage businesses can help organizations achieve up to 50% energy savings, considerably reducing running costs in existing applications, experts from ABB tell us. However, replacing motors is not always a possibility. For example, many bakery applications are bespoke, meaning that changing a motor could alter the end product because the exact conditions may be hard to replicate. At the same time, industrial motors are generally expected to have a lifespan of up to 15 years and as a result, manufacturers won’t want to replace motors early on in their life cycle.

You can read the rest of this article in the May-June issue of European Baker & Biscuit magazine, which you can access by clicking here.