Conveyor Belt Spillage

Did you try speeding the belt up?

What are the belts carrying? What type of belts?

This is a common problem and there can be a number of causes. If you have a badly designed transfer chute, no amount of modification of skirts will solve your problem. I specialise in helping people with their chute designs.

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Not knowing the speed, size, or construction of the conveyor its difficult to give recommendations.....so, wether its feasible try putting side guards on the conveyor thats fabricated to fit under the belt to seal it off and angled up.

p911

We don't even know where the spillage is occurring. But chances are that it is happening at the transfer point.

If the chute is performing its function correctly, then there should be minimal problems with spillage. Standard skirt designs should suffice. If you are attacking a problem from the point of view of trying to beef up the skirts, then you are not going to win the game. The next likely outcome is that you will wear out the belt.

But chances are that it is happening at the transfer point.

correct

It may not even be spillage from over flow, but from transfer......had a designed belt conveyor that took shredded cheese away from an Urschel and into a tumble drum. Knowing this ahead of time, I enclosed the whole conveyor It was only about 7' long. gotta "atta-boy" from the customer.

If you are attacking a problem from the point of view of trying to beef up the skirts, then you are not going to win the game.

I take it there is no skirts, but if there are, your are chasing an issue without addressing the problem.......next most common problem I come across is belt tracking on sanitary conveyors. Do not even know if this is an industrial conveyor or what?

p911

As stated previously, without more information, a real solution is not able to be reached.

We need more information.

What type of conveyor is it.

Is it a belt conveyor or roll conveyor?

What is the product that is being carried?

We manufacture conveyors for produce packinghouses, we move everthing from cherry tomatoes and cherries to watermelons.

The most heavy duty conveyors we've produced was to take potatoes that were being dumped directly from the trucks to the belt with dirt and everything else on them.

There should be guides at everypoint of transfer along with the deliveries to prevent spillage. If you're having spillage then it's either by poor design or your machinery isn't up to par with demands they are being subjected too.

With the chutes, are they completely vertical or sloped. Have you tried putting flags in the chutes made from heavy belting material to slow the descent of the product.

Put less on it?

The regarding information is that

1- Belt is carrying urea prills.

2- Belt speed had been increased it shows some improvement but did not eliminate the problem.

3- Already skirts are installed on the belt.

4- Spillage is occuring at five shoots from where product is coming on this belt.

5- The belt is plan transfer conveyor without any buckets etc

6- The belt is shifting material to elevation which can not be changed

I think i've answered all the required queries

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The regarding information is that

1- Belt is carrying urea prills.

2- Belt speed had been increased it shows some improvement but did not eliminate the problem.

3- Already skirts are installed on the belt.

4- Spillage is occuring at five shoots from where product is coming on this belt.

5- The belt is plan transfer conveyor without any buckets etc

6- The belt is shifting material to elevation which can not be changed

I think i've answered all the required queries

A few basics to look out for with transfer chutes

The incoming material needs to be controlled. That is to say, it needs to be concentrated into a stream that can be moved in the desired direction. This generally means it needs to be guided into a vertical stream, the centre of which coincides with the centre of the receiving belt.

The material should be guided onto the receiving belt at a velocity that approximately matches the belt velocity. A curved chute is ideal for this function, particularly in the case of prill with a low angle of repose. The width of the chute at the discharge point should be no more than 2/3 of the belt width and the discharge point should be as close to the belt as possible.

The surcharge angle on the belt with a material like urea prill should be assumed to be zero. That is to say, the surface of the material will be flat and the belt capacity should be calculated on that basis.

Materials such as yours are easily fluidized. If it is allowed to fall vertically it will pick up air that must be removed as it settles onto the belt. This will cause the material to 'boil' at the loading point, throwing a load onto the skirts. A well designed curved chute will allow the material to arrive at the belt surface in a directed, consolidated stream, which avoids the boiling effect.

You can incorporate two levels of skirts, and inner and an outer one. The inner one should assist the material to settle onto the belt. It should be vertical and have a clearance from the belt of approximately 5 mm. The outer skirt is to control spillage. It can comprise a strip of soft rubber suspended so that its outer surface sits flat on the top surface of the belt. The gap between the edge of the rubber and the inner skirt should be approximately 30 mm. The skirt should be of sufficient length to allow the material to settle onto the belt. As a rule of thumb, a length equal to 5 belt widths will suffice.

That really is still not enough information.

You need to have the manufacturers of those conveyors come out and look at them so they can take pictures for their engineers to look at in order to make corrections.

So you have a conveyor and it is on an incline and you are moving a powdered substance.

We need to know the layout of your equipment because any solution we recommend might interfere with other equipment, creating a new problem. We have to see the locations where the spillage is taking place. It might be something that a piece of teflon tape might be enough to fix.

Conveyor suppliers and manufacturers (as companies) rarely know how the things really work. You need to get lucky with the field man.

Yes I understand that. I'm looking from the perspective of my company. We manufacture, install and service our equipment. We manufacture conveyors, sizers, palletizers, bin stackers and destackers and washers for bins and produce and bin dumps. We manufacture belt conveyors, roll conveyors and build flumes to move product by water. Our field techicians are on call 24/7 because moving produce is non-stop during the season and if a conveyor is down that packinghouse loses $1000's/hr. When that fruit is delivered, it's delivered whether they are ready for it or not and if they can't get it through the process and it goes to waste that packinghouse has to pay that cost.

We even refurbish and upgrade existing machines already in the field but in order to do it, we need pictures of the machine so we can see the environment the layout and the damage where it is occurring.

Some companies do - İ agree. The first İ saw was DuoBrava İ believe it was - a European company. On that startup we didn't even have to say anything. The guy just showed up and took care of business. Some 30 years back. Other companies are just selling 'things'. Was on a startup in Mexico where and American company out of İndiana sent a guy who would always say, 'İ don't know - İ'm not an engineer'! Sent that clown packing before too long. Most conveyor spillage is not an engineers work but that of a good compotent field tech.

You're right, it depends on the degree of the repairs. The field techs do go to the sites and make their own decisions on what is to be done on the spot.

It's when there needs to be some configuration change in the machinery that engineers need to get involved, such as the original motor not able to pull the load.

Agreed - but the field tech has to be smart enough to understand when he needs home office support and when he should take care of it. Some companies seem to consider the fees for the startup man as frosting on the cake that comes for no effort. Good companies don't look at it that way.

Yes and sometimes the field tech gets a little too smart and make changes that cause the engineers having to make changes to the rest of the machine to compensate for what the technician decided to do.

İ think we are on the opposite sides of a fence - İ worked in the engineering office but spent 90% of my tiem in the plants where the office designs often turn out to not work quite as well as the desk bound guy thought they would.

I started as a fabricator for the company. Then moved into quality control and safety, also did some assembly, now I'm in engineering. I'm not an engineer but I do all the custodial work for the engineers and process the work orders into the shop and do the outsourcing. I've been on both sides of the fence. A lot has to do with the procedures involved in our two companies.

The majority of our machines are standardized, we have some prototypes. Our biggest problem is communication. The technician/assembler lead man makes the decision to make a change on the spot for a machine that is still in process of being built and doesn't tell anybody and later it comes around that something isn't working and the finger is pointed at the engineer and it is determined that it would have worked correctly in the first place had the technician consulted somebody first before making the changes. It's been a major cause for rework. When it's a part that is at fault it is because it was either made wrong in the first place, or something was left out on the drawing.

The manufacturers of the conveyors are not necessarily the designers of the chutes and associated plant.

I'm aware of that. We sometimes use buyout conveyors, like Roach, but we provide our own chutes and deliveries for all the conveyors. Since our goal is the transfer of fruits and vegetables we don't trust that aspect to anyone else.

There are a few guys around who really understand feeding conveyors - they spend a good deal of time making baffles, guides, rock boxes, deflectors and so on to guide the material and minimize damage. Your conveyor or belt supplier should be able to recommend someone. Most companies are losing a fortune in damaged material in the conveying system and ignore the problem/loss as it isn't easy to rectify if you don't really understand the problem.

The guys who rework chutes generally spend more time watching than doing - they have to determine the real problem and not just the most obvious one.

First you start a session keep everyone going and then you dissapear.

Where is your Conveyor manufacturer? Did you pay his money/he ran away ?

Did you copy his previous conveyor to save money and make your name? ...and now since the whole shit is on your head you are seeking solution?