Innovations in Flexibility, Reliability Keep Products Moving

The new Marathon vibratory conveyor with monobeam construction features a narrow frame to provide better access to the conveyor bed and fewer parts to clean.Photo courtesy of Key TechnologyReliability and sanitation go hand in hand, he notes. For example, many Key Technology customers choose vibratory conveyors over belt conveyors because they have fewer moving parts and an easy-to-clean bed surface, improving both reliability and sanitation. What’s more, Key Technology’s vibratory conveyors feature a monobeam construction, with a single structural member tucked under the conveyor bed. That improves sanitation because there are fewer parts to clean. Smart feedback improves system control, thereby enhancing product flow, reducing spillage from the conveyor, and further boosting sanitation.

This focus on sanitation begins with the design of the conveyors. Engineers use finite element analysis and flow modeling to simulate product movement on the conveyor and the operation of the conveyor itself. This analysis is followed by other design and construction practices.

“We slope surfaces to prevent standing water, minimize laminated surfaces and make 100% continuous welds instead of skip welds,” Sanchez says. “We consider the sanitary design features within product contact zones as well as the splash zones and the structural supports supporting the equipment. All of our conveyors can be washed down with high-temperature, high-pressure water.”

Wire Belt Company of America makes its products from stainless steel, which has always been safe for food contact. But the company has taken further steps toward hygienic design. “Wire Belt has recently introduced a line of enhanced hygienic conveyors that have many food safety-related features,” says Rick Spiak, vice president of sales and marketing for the belt supplier.

A conveyor with open construction moves meat products across a belt suitable for use in hygiene-sensitive applications.Photo Courtesy of Wire BeltFeatures of the new Wire Belt line include simplified wash-through and open section leg frame construction, part of a clean-in-place (CIP) design that makes the conveyors easy to sanitize, clean, and maintain. The equipment also contains high-density blue plastic components. These materials, along with the design, leave no place for bacteria and allergens to hide.

“All our sanitary equipment is constructed of 304 or 316 stainless steel and finished to food and dairy standards, including 3-A certified and USDA accepted,” says Flexicon’s Slack. In addition, the equipment offers design features that minimize washdown time while eliminating contamination.

Sanitation and the ability to easily clean equipment seemed at one time a “nice-to-have” feature, comments John Strong, sales manager for Dynamic Conveyor. The need to maximize worker productivity during the pandemic changed the calculation with regard to throughput and sanitation. “Now speed and ease of cleaning is paramount,” he says.

The company’s DynaClean products help in this effort. Designed and fabricated to minimize places where contaminants can hide, they are easy to clean without requiring the use of any special tools, which saves time, he notes.

Food safety, conveyor quality, ease of wash-down, and sanitation all work together, Hapman’s Zeluff says. These interacting needs impact everything from the finish on an industry standard material, like 304 stainless steel, to the welds that join different structural pieces together. Some welds must be continuous, polished, and blended into the base metal. At the extreme, customer requirements might mandate a full blending, which entails grinding and fine polishing that can make the welds disappear. These various construction procedures are all done to eliminate any cracks or crevices that can trap contaminants or lead to standing water.

But there is a limit as to what is possible, Zeluff says. “Sometimes the design doesn’t allow for it because you have to build structurally to support your equipment.”

The level of support required also includes the weight of the product, which can be in the thousands of pounds. In cases where the need for sanitation and structural support collide, lasers might enable fabrication that meets requirements for cleanliness and strength, according to Zeluff.

Flexible, modular, and portable equipment is now required

A final key trend involves adapting to change, which shows up in a number of areas. Cost and demand swings, for instance, have buffeted both the makers of conveyors and those in the food and beverage industry who use such equipment.

One way to overcome such situations is through equipment flexibility. Many of Flexicon’s systems are available with frame-mounted casters that allow for in-plant mobility, a capability that pays off in several ways, according to Slack. “The system can be rolled almost anywhere in a facility, potentially eliminating the need for multiple examples of the same equipment,” he says. “An extra benefit is that they can be moved to a designated cleaning or storage area between uses.”

Dynamic Conveyor has conveyors that are modular, Strong notes, meaning that they can be changed in the field and modified in response to demand changes. He recalls one customer that opted for a sectional sanitary conveyor so that its length could be altered to accommodate demand that ebbed and flowed due to shutdowns and other external factors.

Strong also points to the company’s portable conveyors. Food and beverage processors can move these from one bulk hopper to the next, dispensing different ingredients into the conveyor so that they form layers. The end result, in the case of one processor, was that the portable conveyor functioned as more than just a way to get material from one point to another.

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“The conveyor became a multipurpose tool to collect product, and then transfer it, and then, as it unloaded, the layers of the product self-mixed, making it function as a mixing machine,” Strong explains. “Three machines in one.”

The need for more adaptability to handle changing conditions shows up in the making of conveying systems themselves, Sanchez says. Stainless steel is the biggest element in the Key Technology’s systems, and this key component has seen large swings in pricing and lead times. With the World Steel Association forecasting continued growth in steel demand for 2022, and China, a leading supplier, cutting back on steel production for environmental reasons, the squeeze on the material is not likely to ease.

Conveying system makers are therefore implementing strategies to ensure that they can meet their customers’ product needs. “We plan ahead and purchase stainless steel and other materials and components in more quantities than we used to, so we have the necessary supplies to minimize delays and interruptions,” Sanchez says.

Other vendors report similar approaches, targeting different key components as a way to continue to provide the needed level of customer support. Wire Belt, for instance, has built up a raw material inventory, doing so at the beginning of the pandemic, according to Spiak. The company also works closely with and communicates frequently to key customers, he adds. This helps overcome supply chain challenges and demand swings.

Enhancing uptime and increasing flexibility

Looking forward, conveying equipment suppliers expect these trends of automation, reliability, sanitation, and flexibility to continue and to interact with each other. Automation, for instance, is being pushed into new areas in an effort to enhance uptime and increase flexibility. Customers want assurance that equipment will be available when needed, and so suppliers are putting technology to work to provide that reassurance.

“Remote diagnostics, which lets a processor know a machine is healthy and alerts them if it’s not, is more popular now than ever,” Sanchez says.

Processors are also increasingly asking for better precision in material movement. The need is to not only get the ingredient to the right point but also in the right amount, with the margin for error expected to continue to shrink over time.

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“They [processors] need better accuracy. Accuracy is getting more and more important,” Nyhof says. Automation will continue to play a key role in measuring material and controlling its movement.

Finally, these trends and what they require may also conflict. Zeluff notes, for instance, that demand is growing for both portable units, which provide flexibility, and a higher discharge height, which is needed for bigger hoppers, blenders, and the like.

There is a limit on how big a portable unit can be, though, with one constraint being worker safety and another being ceiling height. Once unit heights get to about 14 or 15 ft, Zeluff advises going with a modular, and not portable, design. This approach does require swapping equipment in and out, but with a toolless design, the time it takes to do the switch can be reduced by two-thirds, depending on the configuration.

As heights rise, processors, system integrators, and equipment suppliers need to think through how all critical tasks will be done, preferably doing so during the design phase of a project.

A conveying system will not always simply move goods along. There will be times when the product changes, and so a towering structure installed without taking changes into account could cause a problem.