What is accumulation conveyor’s right setup?
In most manufacturing, packaging and logistics applications, sometimes the handling of unit loads needs products to stop from moving temporarily. Accumulation conveyors fulfil this duty, ensuring more precise control of any stage of the conveyor line for sorting, picking, packaging and palletizing of products. For industries dealing with such operations, it’s essential to know the accumulation conveyor set-up to select the better components for an efficient system.
What is accumulation conveyor?
Accumulation conveyors are designed to hold or stop items temporarily. In plants where multiple lines merge, they retain products before moving to the next stage, allowing time for other equipment to become available and for operators to move between work areas. Also, especially in picking and packaging lines, they slow down conveyor flow to ensure easy, unhurried and correct operations. These conveyors can be adjusted according to the type of transported items to prevent them from being damaged. For fragile products, zero pressure accumulation conveyors are recommended since they avoid contact between items when they stop. Instead, on minimum or medium pressure conveyors, even when products accumulate, a slight pressure is still applied, making them touch. That’s why they are more suitable for sturdy and similar-size items so that wider ones can’t damage smaller ones. Once you have defined your requisites, you need to find the accumulation conveyor setup for your application.
Rulmeca components for accumulation conveyors
Rulmeca designs and manufactures ideal components to temporarily accumulate the most varied and sized items while preserving product integrity. Chain or belt-driven friction rollers are mostly used in accumulation conveyors to reduce the impact pressure applied to items in buffer sections by the continuous rotation of the drive element as products accumulate. Rulmeca production counts friction and double friction chain rollers and friction rollers with Poly-V belts, which can be used with light, medium and heavy unit loads according to the specific application. Moreover, for accumulation sections with crossed round belts transmission, Rulmeca produces specific belt wheels to connect the belt on the shaft and partially reduce the pressure between loads. Finally, accumulation conveyors can also be driven by Rulmeca Drive Roller, which can execute frequent stop/start cycles to retain products. Moreover, the available Zero Pressure Accumulation (ZPA) card prevents products from touching in transit and risking damage.
