How to Make Sure You Choose the Right Conveyor Belt for Your Business
Everyone knows that to get a job done properly you need the right sort of tools or equipment. If you’re nailing two pieces of wood together, you use a hammer; if you’re sewing, you use the right-sized needle. This is easy enough, but when it comes to ongoing processes, especially complicated ongoing processes and jobs, things get a bit more complicated.
Choosing the right conveyor belt system for your business is especially complicated, but by no means impossible, especially if you have the right advice. There’s a few things to consider – do you need a lighter system? Or one that needs heavy duty chains and other whistles and bells?
Here’s the main points you need to think about when you’re choosing your ideal conveyor belt system.
The type of material of product you’ll be conveying
This is probably the most important thing to consider – after all, it’s the primary reason you’re looking at belts, right? It’s the first step you take when you’re selecting and it may be as much a case of eliminating unsuitable belt models as looking at the more suitable ones. You need to look at the weight and size of the materials or products you’ll be moving, what temperature they’ll be at, whether the products are widgets, foodstuffs or pharmaceuticals, and whether the products are sharp-edged, corrosive or aggressive in any other way.
If your products are fairly innocuous – boxes of small-to-medium-sized toys, for example, then a simple flat belt is your go-to. However, if you’re moving large and/or heavy items, you may need something sturdier, like modular plastic belting.
If you’re in the food or pharma business, you’ll need to be able to wash your belt – thoroughly and on a regular basis. You may need to use harsh detergents or other chemicals on it without worrying about damage. There may also be the need for other customised solutions for your belt.
What are you using the belt for, exactly?
Obviously, it’s to move things from Point A to Point B, but do you need to reposition items? Or to index them and weigh them as they go along? Do you need your staff to give products a final check before they go into boxes or lorries? Do you need items to travel at an incline? All these requirements will need customised solutions.
There’s timing belts, cleated belts, merging and magnetic belts, for example. You can tailor your belt to lots of applications and needs, especially if you find an experienced provider.
Your operating environment
If your toy factory has a nice indoor climate (and of course, it should do), then you’ll have a much wider range of belts to choose from as there’s no great environmental challenges. However, extreme temperatures, sterile-room requirements and hazardous materials will all impose their special needs on your decision-making process.
Anything else?
Well, of course there is! You need to think about the speed at which the belt runs – if no-one is to be stood alongside it, counting or checking, then it can run a bit faster, for example. Then there’s the overall length you need, as well as the space it all needs to fit into. This is why you need the experts!
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