Types And Uses of Gravity Roller Conveyor

By Simon Stylles

All the industries, be it a small portable cement mixer or large waste recycling machines, conveyors specially gravity roller conveyors are a means of fast, safe and cost effective means of feeding materials without any interruption into building mixers, food machinery or transporting heavy and fragile materials from a staging area to the actual area. There is no need for a man to manually shovel material from the supply dump into the mixer.

Gravity roller conveyors are the simplest of all the conveyors and the oldest. It is believed that the Egyptians used the gravity conveyors to build pyramids and to transport the heavy stone blocks. They use an unpowered bed of rollers so the bed is sloped to allow the material to be pushed down the line. They are used to transport solid items with a flat base for avoiding the risk to topple. They can be set at a slight incline or horizontal, to allow staff to 'freewheel' the products along the line. Gravity conveyors are also very useful as an adjunct to powered conveyor systems, providing a packing or accumulation area.

Gravity Roller Conveyor can play an important role in industrial manufacturing process. The classic example is for feeding materials into a processing machine and taking them away again. Processing can include such things as cooking, wrapping, annealing, filling/emptying of a container, binding and so forth. A logic controller controls the feeding and flow of materials on a Gravity Controller which in turn is linked to the main machine processing unit. This helps in increasing the overall efficiency and the reducing the expenses.

The purpose of an accumulation conveyor is to provide a 'stop zone' - usually at the end of the conveyor - where products literally come to a stop. This can be to facilitate packaging or handling, or merely to prevent them falling off the end of the belt and onto the floor! A short length of gravity roller conveyor makes a simple but effective accumulation zone. Products reach the end of the belt and simply slide to a halt on the roller section.

Waste recycling is one of the vital issues of our time. With pressure on availability of landfill sites, heightened environmental awareness at all tiers of government, and increased attention (and legislation) from both Westminster and Brussels; the need for efficient waste sortation and recycling has never been greater.

Gravity Conveyors form a critical component of any MRF (Materials Recovery Facility), facilitating the movement of waste from a loading dock, to a sortation line (human, mechanical, or a hybrid), and on into crushing and bailing machines.

A major attraction of roller conveyors in general is the low capital cost, combined with negligible maintenance cost. Short of an all-out attack by a fork-lift truck or similar, there is very little that can go wrong with them. Individual components - such as the rollers - can be easily and cheaply replaced in the event of accidental damage.

Gravity Roller Conveyors are available at a varied price range depending upon the bed used. Plastic bed rollers are cheaper than the mild steel, galvanized steel or the stainless steel roller beds. The usage depends upon the sort of load and usage you require, and on what environment you wish to operate the machine in. (for outdoor use it is normally recommended galvanized rollers at the very least, for example).

There are various versions of Gravity Roller Conveyors available in the market depending upon the application and customer requirement. Semi-precision vs. fully-precision roller bearings, pre-set height or angle of slope or conveyors with variable height feet to allow both adjustment of overall height, as well as minor adjustments to slope angle. - 26221

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