Including turns in your conveyor design is often unavoidable—especially when dealing with cramped spaces or navigating around factory supports and existing equipment. There are a lot of different technologies in the market, all purpose-built for precise reasons. Preventing delays and product damage are the biggest considerations, and the right conveyor will avoid these.
To choose the correct turn conveyor, you must account for the product being handled, the assembly environment, the level of sanitation, and your throughput goals. With that in mind, the conveyor selection guide is an excellent place to start. The guide will help narrow down options based on your priorities. Here are three considerations to make when evaluating your options.
In some food industries, it is imperative that all parts of a conveyor meet strict sanitation requirements, including the curves and turns. To be truly sanitary, a conveyor must avoid harboring microorganisms and must permit the sanitation crew to access all areas for a thorough cleaning. It is crucial to reach every nook and cranny to remove deposits and prevent bacteria from growing.
For processes that do not require strict sanitation, we offer industrial (non-sanitary) options for the conveyors mentioned above.
When a product—such as a box, crate, or pallet—moves along a conveyor it can be important to retain proper orientation for processes such as scanning barcodes or applying labels.
If your conveyor line is straight from start to finish, congratulations! Your product will always face the way you need it to, whether you’re packing, inspecting, or assembling. Unfortunately, not everyone lives in this wonderful (imaginary) straight-line world. These tight turn conveyor options can maintain product orientation throughout a turn.
Zero Tangent Belt Conveyor – Mentioned above, this conveyor has plastic modular belting that improves reliability and retains product positioning. Like the fixed radius 90 Degree Belt Turn and the Metal Belt Curve, there’s no need for a straight belt input or exit for the curve. Plus, this unit handles s-shaped turns.
There are many more options available for conveyors without strict sanitation requirements. Any of the solutions mentioned above can be built less expensively for non-sanitary environments. However, in those instances, it’s important to consider the chain style when selecting a conveyor.
Tabletop Conveyors – Low cost, basic conveyor, with quick shipping. Typically this unit is for light and medium-sized loads. They are suitable for package, carton, or case handling.
A modular conveyor system is useful when your production setup changes. Instead of replacing the whole system, a modular system allows you to simply disassemble and reconfigure the conveyor to fit the new requirements.
Oftentimes a conveyor system needs to multi-task, so it’s handy to have a variety of modular choices that fit together. If easy adaptability to future process changes is important to you, consider a modular FlexMove conveyor from NCC.
We have only covered a handful of solutions and applications in this blog post. Click here to see our complete list of conveyor solutions for a variety of products handled and types of applications, like vertical conveying, inspection or accumulating.
Choosing a conveyor to fit both your application and your facility can be daunting. We’d be glad to lend you our expertise. Reach out at info@nccas.com or call 215-721-1900 to speak to one of our friendly representatives.