Belt driven conveyor rollers for unit handling applications
Rulmeca conveyor rollers for belt driven applications
Belt driven conveyor rollers play a vital role in the field of material handling, enabling efficient transportation of goods and packages within industries such as manufacturing, distribution and logistics. They are suitable for handling unit items of heavy and light loads, regular and irregular shape, including particularly fragile goods, along flat or slightly inclined paths. Motion can be transmitted to rollers through a unique flat belt or single round belt rings, therefore requiring different designed rollers and drive units. With a well-established experience in manufacturing components for unit handling, Rulmeca provides different series of rollers and pulleys needed to assembly efficient and reliable belt driven conveyors.
Drive units for belt driven conveyor rollers
In flat-belt section driven conveyor rollers, a continuous loop belt is tensioned between two pulleys. In particular, a drive pulley is placed at the head of conveyor to transmit motion to the belt through an external or internal geared motor. At the conveyor end opposite a tensioning-reversing pulley in placed to redirect the belt back to the drive pulley and keeps its tensioning along its return part.
Instead, on round-section belt driven conveyor rollers, a unique driving shaft connected to a gear motor transmits motion to each roller through the belt rings running in a dedicated groove.
Roller types for belt driven conveyors
The first distinction between belt driven conveyor rollers due to the type of transmission system lies in their designed head. Rulmeca production counts both rollers with fixed heads for flat-section belt and grooved rollers for round belt transmission.
The other main difference concerns their specific function in the whole conveyor system. Carrying rollers are essential in both configurations of belt driven conveyors having the function of supporting the transported load. However, unlike round-section belt, flat-section belt requires additional types of rollers to work in conjunction to ensure its smooth and controlled movement:
- Pressure rollers to be placed under the flat driving belt to keep it in contact with carrying conveyor rollers and enable motion transmission;
- Return rollers to be placed on the underside of the conveyor to support the return path of the belt;
- Snub rollers (or pulleys) to be placed near the drive pulley to increase the enveloping angle and keep belt alignment.
