AS/RS systems and conveyors can increase the productivity of your distribution facilities, enhance warehouse safety and meaningfully lower human resource expenses.

Conveyors can move everything from lightweight cartons to heavy pallets throughout your material handling system and they are a fundamental component of contemporary material handling design.

Conveyors can be grouped in three different classes for the vast majority of material handling operations:

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

Powered Package Handling Roller or Belt Conveyors

Powered roller or belt systems are frequently used for lighter weight items like cartons and packages.

Belt systems are mostly used for advancing products along a line, while roller systems are used for collecting cartons in specific areas along the line.

Belt Conveyors

Used since the beginning of the 20th Century, conveyor belts are a staple of many material handling operations. Lower cost than roller systems and frequently better suited to certain tasks like transporting lighter weight products, conveyor belts have a place in most material handling designs.

Belt systems feature a long, looped belt that rides a series of non-powered rollers on a metal substructure called a slider belt. Motor driven pulleys turn the belt and move objects down the conveyor line.

Belts can be configured with a range of surfaces and materials depending on the purpose and role of the conveyor. For example, a conveyor belt surface could be totally flat in portions where products need to be pushed off the line and may have a gripping texture on segments where goods must be transported up inclines.

Roller Conveyors

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

Most importantly, roller conveyors can enable collection of products on the line where belt configurations can not. This is an important contrast because there are innumerable scenarios where products must slow down and accumulate in material handling designs. Accumulation is often necessary when objects must be paused before being relayed to automated palletizers or sorters.

Many roller conveyors also have the capacity to supervise objects on the line and utilize zero pressure accumulation, meaning none of the accumulating objects come into contact as they slow down and finally stop.

Roller designs feature a series of cylindrical rollers that are usually powered in one of these ways:.

• Line-shaft conveyors: in a line shaft system, a long metal shaft runs underneath the cylinders perpendicular to them and is joined to each roller with rubber O-rings. A motor rotates the shaft, and thereby drives the rollers via the connected O-rings. Line-shaft conveyors are the most cost efficient of all roller style conveyors, but they may also need the most repair because the O-ring connectors between the shaft and rollers need frequent readjustment and sometimes fail.
• Belt-driven roller conveyors: As you may expect, these conveyors are driven by a belt mechanism that sits beneath the roller platform. A motor propels the belt, which propels the cylinders.
• MDR conveyors: Motorized roller conveyors, sometimes called motor-driven roller (MDR) conveyors, are set up in sections where a single roller from each section is powered by it's own motor. That individual motor-driven roller is connected to the adjacent rollers in that section by way of rubber O-rings, and therefore drives all the rollers in the segment. Motorized segments are positioned in succession to create the conveyor line.
  MDR systems are known for their energy efficiency because: a.) they usually are powered by 24 volt DC motors and b.) the motors are configured to run only when an object is present on the roller cylinders, and as a result they are idle throughout much of the day.
  Although the cost of MDR conveyors is higher than line-shaft and belt drive rollers, electricity expenses and maintenance costs are typically much lower than the other types of conveyors.
• Segmented belt conveyor: the concept of motor driven roller conveyors eventually led to the development of segmented belt conveyors. Similar to motor driven roller systems, segmented belts function independently and feature several of the same advantages of MDRs, including accumulation capacity.

Powered Pallet Handling Conveyors

Powered pallet-handling conveyors are quite often paired with palletizers and automatic storage and retrieval systems. Pallet handling conveyors can usually accommodate pallets of up to 4,000 lbs and operate at a much slower pace than package handling conveyors, often at speeds of two to four pallets per minute.

Pallet-handling conveyors come in a couple of varieties: roller conveyors and chain conveyors.

• Pallet-handling chain conveyor: perhaps the most basic of all conveyors, pallets on a chain conveyor line are positioned on top of segments of heavy duty chain. Motors propel the chain segments which in turn move the pallets along the line.
• Pallet-handling roller conveyor: similar in concept to MDR conveyors, pallet handling roller conveyors use large cylinders and sturdy chains to link the motorized cylinder to the remaining rollers in a conveyor segment.

Non-Powered Conveyors

Roller or skatewheel systems are the most common types of non-powered conveyors used in typical warehouse operations. These types of systems use gravity or inertia to move smaller products though warehouses, pick modules, automated sorters, workstations, package sorting areas and loading docks.

Skatewheel systems are comprised of many independent wheels and require minimal energy to sustain the inertia of objects as they progress along a conveyor line. On the whole, they propel items faster than non-powered roller configurations and they have more versatility when it comes to layout. Considering they're individual wheels as opposed to a belt, they are often put to use in curved segments of a conveyor system.

Typically non-powered roller systems are less expensive than skatewheel conveyor systems. They're often used for pick modules, workstations, and other zones where it's advantageous to maintain a level surface to work on. Roller conveyors are also used to slow products down that are coming from higher speed systems like sorters so that human laborers can keep up with conveyor performance.

Non-powered skatewheel and roller systems have a serious handicap in comparison to powered systems: by using gravity and inertia to move materials you lose the ability to regulate the force applied to those products. In other words, you have very little influence on the speed and inertia of products on your line.

Conveyor System Engineering In Ontario

If you 'd like a complete evaluation of conveyor system options for your storage facility, distribution center or other material handling operation, you can talk to a professional at Raymond West by calling 909-930-9399.

4602 E Brickell St.
Ontario, California 91761 

Phone: 909-930-9399