Is Your Belt Too Tight?

Let’s admit it, sizing and specifying motor drive rollers for a conveyor system can be challenging. You do all the calculations, you check them twice, you place the order and install the system only to find that performance isn't meeting expectations. It's frustrating and not to mention an expensive predicament.

We're here to help.

We've been designing and building MDRs and related controls and accessories since 2000. We’ve helped thousands of customers around the world properly size their MDR based conveying systems so they work the first time. We have years of experience, and also have powerful and effective modeling tools we use to help specify the right drive and controller for your unique application.

Before an order is placed, our team will help make sure the order is placed correctly from the start by understanding some basic and somewhat obvious information. What are you handling, how many? What is your required throughput rate? What's the load weight and physical size of conveyed items? What type of materials are the packages made of? Paperboard? Plastic? Metal? Wood? What type of roller covers are you using, and what type of belts are driving those rollers - round, flat, poly-vee, full width, etc. What speed is required for the conveyor? While all of this seems obvious to many of you, this data needs to be fully understood and taken into account when specifying a system. And even then performance sometimes suffers and collective heads are scratched.

That's where our experience can play a role. Sometimes performance can suffer for simple, yet not so obvious reasons. We've diagnosed situations where belts are simply tensioned too tight and need to be loosened. There have been other cases where roller bearings simply need lubrication. We've encountered situations where a conveyor wasn't grounded properly. There are countless others where our experience allowed us to diagnose and solve the problem. Each of these scenarios and many others can affect conveyor system performance in dramatic ways. Once those relatively simple problems are identified and remedied, performance improves, and expectations are met.

The moral of the story is, we're here to help. We have our own powerful tools and models we use internally, and we also have an experienced team of professionals that have seen just about every scenario possible. And yes, sometimes you may just need to let a notch on the old belt.