Belt Conveyor Improves Sanitary Design, Product Orientation

Sanitation has been paramount in some of the latest developments out of Eaglestone Equipment, which showed off its equipment and other innovations at PACK EXPO International 2022 in Chicago. Two of its newest developments—a fabric belt conveyor and a food-grade belt scraper—raise the level of sanitation in conveyance, making them ideally suited to food processing applications.

The Constant Turn Fabric Belt Conveyor adds features that improve sanitation. “We’ve added some features to drop the cleaning down to one hour when it was four to six,” says Carmen Sammauro, president of Eaglestone Equipment. “We’ve added some features to the guards to be able to help them be removed—for sanitation and for maintenance.”

The Accu-Track belt drive system keeps the fabric belt firmly in place, and the tight nose bar transfer also helps to keep smaller food products—like cookies and bars—moving efficiently through production lines.

“With the 180 and the tight transfer, the product can go through the turn and into the next operation without changing the orientation—so the product stays like soldiers, so when we go to automation, we can actually pick it up and get it packed correctly,” Sammauro says. “That’s very important when you’re doing 900 pieces per minute and you need to get to three wrappers.”

Sanitary belt scraper

Eaglestone also showcased its new Flex-Scraper sanitary food-grade belt scraper. The variable-tension scraper enables different belt scraping aggressiveness to follow the contour of both smooth fabrics and modular plastic belts. The scraper is available in a range of lengths and widths to fit any belt.

Designed specifically for the food industry, the solid plastic scraper improves sanitation levels and enables better reuse of chocolates or other food materials for future batches. “One of the great features that we’ve incorporated into this is the seam-free food contact area,” Sammauro says. “Typical scrapers have a seam that goes across the entire area, allowing product to migrate and touch that seam and get stuck in there. This system allows the product to go over smoothly and be recaptured for further use.”

The solid UHMW design allows for easy cleaning, also enabled by minimal parts and a tool-free disassembly. “The tool-less removal feature is great for quick and easy access for sanitation,” Sammauro says.