Accumulation Conveyor Systems And Their Uses

Posted August 2, 2009 – 9:19 pm in: Equipment

An industrial conveyor has a feature known as the accumulation system which helps in keeping a product in place until it is required to be released. Applications include feeding product to a machine such as a case sealer at a specified rate, or to hold all items to be shipped on a given truck until that truck is ready to be loaded. It works with one or more “stop” zones which temporarily stalls the product movement.

Accumulation systems come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from the simple to the highly sophisticated. But all of them are basically geared towards a single goal to prevent products from ‘falling off’ the end of the conveyor and at the same time allowing free movement of the products near the ‘beginning’ of the conveyor.

A simply designed belt conveyor might have a short stretch of unpowered gravity rollers towards its rear end. Products move down the belt, and are ‘pushed’ onto the roller area where they coast to a halt. The next set of products in line when mounted on the rollers ‘push’ the first product further down the belt.

Of course, the system described above cannot carry on forever: eventually products will pile up in the accumulation area such that there is no room for the NEXT product. In this scenario an additional sensor can be incorporated to stop the entire system once the accumulation area is ‘full’.

A more sophisticated accumulation system is a powered roller conveyor whereby each roller has a slipping clutch. A barrier stops the product from moving forward as it reaches the end of the conveyor. Friction between the stationary product and the turning rollers beneath it causes the roller clutch to slip, and the roller stops turning. This mechanism makes the system flexible and the conveyor practically functions as an automated accumulation zone.

Accumulation shares most of the features of power roller conveyors but have some significant differences. The drive pressure on the product can be adjusted to a minimum, or even eliminated altogether. This is particularly effective in cases when a long line of cartons have to be accumulated without the application of pressure for use in processes such as loading, sorting, taping, strapping, palletizing, or picking.

Minimum pressure accumulation conveyors allow products to lightly touch while being conveyed. The conveyor stops a moving package, but back pressure is kept to a minimum to eliminate package damage.

In zero-pressure accumulation, conveyed products don’t touch each other and place no force on product when it stops. Drive pressure is removed by placing sensors at regular intervals. Each zone extracts power from a flat drive belt that runs the entire length of the conveyor.

The sensor eye is activated sends a signal to the immediately preceding zone as and when a product is stopped. When the next load moves into this zone, the drive belt is lowered away from the tread rollers causing the product to stop until the product is released. As any product is removed, the rest waiting in line behind this zone will sequentially move forward.

For more details on the applications of accumulation conveyor systems in your industry please visit our web site at www.roller-conveyor.co.uk .

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