Special Purpose Conveyors

Description
In this area, one size most certainly does not fit all! We are often asked to produce special purpose conveyors that must operate under unusual conditions, or perhaps interect with their load in unusual ways, or – in some cases – are just downright exotic! The Central Conveyors design team love this sort of challenge, and are experienced at working with the customer to produce unique industry solutions. Here are some examples:

Special Purpose Conveyors: Glass Painting
This conveyor was required to support glass sheets as they moved past a special painting robot, and then through a drying oven. The challange was to prevent paint ‘pooling’ on the supporting conveyor bed, whilst still supporting the glass plates. It also had to be easy to clean, and to cope with the temperatures inside the drying oven.

In this case the glass is supported on a ‘bed’ of horizontal metal rods, which in turn are supported by metal drive chains in the side of the unit, which move the rods down the length of the conveyor. The rods provide minimum contact-area with the glass sheets, whillst allowing surplus paint to ‘fall’ into the air gap between them. The rods can be easily removed for cleaning, revealing a simple open conveyor structure that is itself very easy to clean.

Special Purpose Conveyors: Mobile Chickscelator
This special purpose conveyors unit allows agricultural workers to ‘sort’ baby birds by type and size, and removed the need to chase them around the barn first. But then… you’d guessed that already, hadn’t you ?

A simple, but fun unit to construct. The ‘foot’ of the unit (labelled ’1′) goes into the chick’s pen. A simple powered belt conveyor then takes them up the ‘neck’ (labeled ’2′) of the unit and into the ‘head tank’. The workers can see down into the tank (it has a mesh roof), put their hands through the ‘portholes’, and pull out individual chicks to be put into appropriate cages.

The chicks don’t like going into dark places, so we had to put holes in the ‘neck’ and ‘foot’ structure to allow daylight in. Careful design was required to ensure that the chick’s couldn’t get their little feet stuck in the conveyor when they exit into the head tank.

Need for Speed
An innocous little conveyor… until you realise that the belt travels in excess of 100mph!!!

This was designed for a University doing wind-tunnel research into car body shapes. It required special attention to both the drive system, and the belt itself, as normal conveyor rollers, motors and belts would disintegrate at these stress levels.

Balancing all of the moving parts was also a challange, as at these speeds the slightest misbalance produced potentially destructive – to say nothing of deafeningly noisy – vibrations (the first prototype sounded like a jet engine).

- See more at: http://www.central-conveyors.co.uk/conveyors/special-purpose-conveyors/#sthash.DaSsrIKR.dpuf