AS/RS systems and conveyors can boost the efficiency of your warehouse, improve warehouse safety and substantially reduce labor expenses.

Modern conveyors can move both individual cartons and entire pallets throughout your material handling system and they are an integral component of modern material handling design.

Conveyor systems can be grouped in three different categories for the vast majority of material handling systems:

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

Powered Package Handling Roller or Belt Conveyors

Powered roller or belt conveyors are often used for less bulky pieces like cartons and packages.

Belt systems are generally employed for moving cartons along a line, while rollers are used for amassing products in certain areas along the line.

Belt Conveyors

Invented more than a century ago, conveyor belts are a staple of many material handling operations. Lower cost than roller conveyors and frequently more appropriate for certain functions like moving lightweight items, belt systems are used in many material handling configurations.

Belt conveyors utilize a long, looped belt that is positioned on the top of a metal slider belt substructure or an array of non-powered rollers. A motor drives a pulley that turns the belt and advances objects down the conveyor line.

Belts are made of an assortment of surfaces and materials in accordance with the function and role of the conveyor. For example, a conveyor belt surface may be un-ridged in portions where cartons need to glide off the line and may have a ridged texture on segments where goods have to be advanced up slopes.

Roller Conveyors

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

Principal among these, roller systems can enable accumulation of products on the line where belt conveyors can not. This is an important distinction because there are endless scenarios where items must decelerate and accumulate in material handling designs. Accumulation is often necessary when products must be temporarily halted before being relayed to automated palletizers or sorters.

Some roller conveyors also have the capability to monitor products on the line and utilize zero pressure accumulation, meaning none of the amassed objects come into contact as they slow down and finally stop.

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

• Line-shaft conveyors: in a line shaft conveyor, a long metal shaft runs underneath the rollers at a right angle to them and is attached to each roller with flexible O-rings. A drive mechanism turns the shaft, and thereby rotates the cylinders via the connected O-rings. Line-shaft conveyors are the least costly of all roller style conveyors, but they can also demand the most service because the O-ring connectors between the shaft and rollers need frequent readjustment and occasionally break.
• Belt-driven roller conveyors: As you may expect, these conveyors are driven by a belt mechanism that lies underneath the roller surface. A motor drives the belt, which propels the roller cylinders.
• MDR conveyors: Motorized roller conveyors, sometimes called motor-driven roller (MDR) systems, are set up in segments where only one roller from each section is propelled by it's own power source. That solitary motor-driven cylinder is joined to the adjacent rollers in that section by way of rubber O-rings, and therefore rotates all the rollers in the segment. Motorized sections are placed in succession to configure the conveyor line.
  MDR systems are known for their energy efficiency because: a.) they usually run on 24V direct current motors and b.) these motors are set up to engage only when an object is detected on the rollers, meaning they are idle much of the time.
  Although the cost of MDR conveyors is higher than belt drive and line-shaft rollers, energy costs and maintenance expenses are generally much lower than the other options mentioned.
• Segmented belt conveyor: the principle of motor driven roller conveyors ultimately inspired the birth of segmented belt conveyors. Similar to motor driven roller conveyors, segmented belts function individually and offer a lot of the same benefits of motor driven rollers, 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 accommodate pallets of up to 2 tons and operate at a much slower rate than carton handling systems, many times at speeds as low as four pallets per minute.

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

• Pallet-handling chain conveyor: perhaps the most rudimentary of all conveyor systems, pallets on a chain conveyor line are positioned on top of segments of heavy duty chain. A drive mechanism advances the lengths of chain which in turn advance the pallets down the line.
• Pallet-handling roller conveyor: analogous to motor driven roller conveyors, pallet handling roller conveyors use large cylinders and sturdy chains to link the motorized roller to the remaining rollers in a conveyor unit.

Non-Powered Conveyors

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

Skatewheel conveyors are comprised of numerous independent wheels and need very little power to maintain the inertia of objects as they move down a conveyor line. As a rule, they advance objects quicker than non-powered roller systems and they have more flexibility when it comes to configuration. Given that they're individual wheels in contrast to a belt, they may be put to use in curved sections of a conveyor system.

In general non-powered roller systems are less expensive than skatewheel conveyor configurations. They are often utilized for work stations, pick modules, and other areas where it's useful to maintain a level platform to work on. They may also be utilized to slow products down that originate from faster moving systems like sorters so that human laborers can keep up with system output.

Both types of non-powered systems have a serious handicap as compared with powered systems: by using inertia and gravity to move products you can't regulate the force applied to those products. In other words, you don't have influence on the speed and inertia of materials on your line.

Conveyor System Engineering In Riverside

If you 'd like a complete evaluation of conveyor system options for your storage facility, distribution center or other material handling operation, you can speak with an expert at Raymond West by calling (951) 384-2444.

Service Area: Redlands, Colton, Rialto, Bloomington, Moreno Valley, Hemet, Perris, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Coachella Valley Phone: (951) 384-2444