Last year we looked at conveyor cleaning and maintenance in the food and beverage industry. This year, we look at conveyance issues related to:

• Space constraints and layout/design
• Energy consumption and ways to reduce it
• Automation integration

Layout/Design Issues

Adding new equipment to an existing conveyor system in crowded manufacturing facilities requires careful planning to ensure efficient space usage and workflow — and can be accomplished by a line audit or “gap walk.”

“The first step is to assess the current workflow by analyzing the existing conveyor system to understand product movement and identify any bottlenecks,” says Marco Pardo, Dorner product manager of conveyance solutions. Documenting how products flow through each stage — from mixing to packaging — will inform where new equipment can be integrated seamlessly. Since conveyors are often application-specific, it’s essential to evaluate the specifications of the new equipment, such as cooking, inspection or packaging machines, in relation to the existing conveyors.

During the line audit, the goal is for the application engineer to look around and help processors better define business production priorities and how to optimize them for the best ROI, says Crystal Willey, Cambridge sales manager for Regal Rexnord. Considerations include metal or plastic belting, straight-line conveyors, multi-conveytiered conveyors, overhead conveyors or oval/spiral systems — or wrapping belts around support columns.

“Engaging system integrators and conveyor suppliers early in the planning phase can provide valuable insights into compatibility and necessary modifications to the current systems,” Pardo adds. Their expertise can help identify solutions that optimize both current and future operations. Furthermore, when designing for expansion, it’s beneficial to plan for flexibility to accommodate future modifications. Utilizing simulation software to model proposed changes can also help visualize the impact of adding new equipment on overall workflow and space usage, aiding in better decision-making.

“In existing facilities, many of the same planning tools used for new greenfield facilities can be applied for the physical equipment installation,” says Trent Meyers, vice president of process industries at E Tech Group, a Control System Integrators Association certified member. If existing equipment and building models are not available, the first step is to complete 3D scanning to define the envelope available for the expansion. New equipment models can be integrated with the scan, demonstrating specifically what needs to be modified to ensure that the process functions as desired. From an integration perspective, audits and assessments of the full IT and OT architecture are the starting point. This information allows the system integrator to define and execute the most effective control system to achieve the project objectives.

“Planning for downtime during installation is another critical aspect; scheduling these changes to minimize disruption to ongoing operations can help maintain productivity,” Pardo adds. Lastly, after installation, conducting thorough testing and validation of the newly integrated equipment ensures that the entire system operates smoothly and addresses any workflow issues identified in the assessment phase. By following these steps, processors can effectively plan for adding new equipment within an existing line, thus maximizing space usage and maintaining efficiency.

Conveyors for Tight Spaces

“If space is a constraint for a customer, my first approach would be to offer a conveyor/equipment option that has a smaller footprint, such as a flexible screw conveyor or an aeromechanical conveyor,” says John Adair, Akona Process Solutions’ new product design engineering manager. “Both of these are made for tighter space requirements than a standard Cablevey tubular drag conveyor. Now, neither of these are new technologies, but they are proven solutions in my experience for customers with space constraints.”

Vibratory conveyors offer significant advantages when working with limited space, particularly when elevation changes aren’t required, says Rudy Sanchez, Key Technology food handling systems product manager. “For perpendicular transfers, vibratory shakers with bias-cut designs provide better product distribution than traditional belt conveyors while improving sanitation and conserving floor space. When elevation changes are needed, Z-frame belt conveyors and bucket elevators minimize footprint requirements. For dry products, negative airlift systems using pipes offer another space-saving option.”

One of the biggest challenges is product manipulation and orientation, says Kory Graham, Tri-Mach vice president of sales and estimating. “Everything works better in a straight line, but when you have configurations and changes, you must develop solutions to maintain product orientation. That’s why Tri-Mach has developed our zero-tangent radius conveyors, as well as merging and diverting equipment.”

“These various types of product manipulation technologies help present the product clearly and concisely down the line despite the footprint challenges we might face,” Graham adds. “If the footprint challenge is from a case management perspective, we have a whole range of passive transfers to maintain orientation and other parameters. So, when dealing with confined spaces, we ask ourselves, ‘what is the most efficient way to achieve the desired results?’ Often, this requires manipulating certain aspects of the line to achieve an efficient layout.”

Tight Spaces: Go Up, Not West

Horace Greeley, famous American author and newspaper editor, once said, “Go West, young man and grow up with the country.” While this works for our country’s geography, you probably don’t have unlimited plant space to go west or any other direction — except vertically.

The ability to go vertical saves space by taking items to a new level (up or down), so something as simple as an incline conveyor with a friction top material can support package handling, says Jeff Garwood, Regal Rexnord senior product manager. “Vertical conveyor systems are available in multiple configurations to handle a wide range of product sizes. They can be incorporated into new lines or retrofit for existing lines. Spiral systems are another solution for elevating or lowering product. For product handling, such as breads, frozen foods, and even glass bottles and cans, look at the leading plastic belt spiral cage solutions that can also solve space constraints while increasing throughput.”

Spiral conveyors are a good way to use vertical spaces, says E Tech’s Meyers. “To maximize the available space, spiral conveyors — both up and down — can and have made effective use of the full building envelope. Their relatively compact footprint, combined with their reliable and consistent performance, are ideal for specific applications.”

For example, a conveyor with an incline — such as a vertical lift conveyor — utilizes height space. With its 90-degree incline, it has a minimal footprint. Bucket elevators are another option to consider, Peterson adds.

“Our strategy involves collaborating with customers to optimize space utilization,” Graham says. “This includes the design and manufacture of sanitary platforms, as well as the strategic relocation of certain aspects of the production line or the integration of new features above existing machinery, focusing on vertical solutions, depending on the space constraint.”

However, this approach does come with its own set of processing challenges. “To address these challenges, we engaged deeply with our customers to develop our Ever-Kleen elevators, which became one of our key initiatives last year,” Graham adds.

Curbing Energy Demands via Automation

While energy usage isn’t necessarily a major consideration for conveying systems, it can add up for large systems, especially if they are running for hours conveying nothing.

“One of the easiest solutions would probably be as simple as, only run your equipment when you need to,” says Akona’s Adair. “I usually give that line when talking to customers about increasing the life of their wear components, but this does also apply to energy usage. Sometimes it is simpler for plant operators to just turn on all the equipment at the same time. If you could set up a cascade start where equipment only turns on when the equipment upstream of it turns on, then you could cut down on wasted energy usage. This would definitely be an example of where automation could be used to help.”

One effective approach to reducing energy consumption involves minimizing the total number of motors in large-scale systems, says Key’s Sanchez. For example, new, longer vibratory conveyors can replace multiple smaller belt conveyors or distribution vibratory conveyors. These extended units operate with a single motor system, significantly decreasing overall energy usage compared to multiple smaller units that each have their own motor.

“The end user is responsible for determining the length of time a conveyor is running,” says Joe Miller, Multi-Conveyor COO. “Simple controls turn a conveyor on and off. Sensors can be used to identify product that engages conveyor movement, but that conveyor must have full power to operate. Conveyor speeds are controlled through the PLC (programmable logic controls) that are pre-programmed by Multi-Conveyor’s electrical engineers. Conveyors can be networked via Ethernet upon request.”

“As energy usage becomes a larger concern, we have seen customers begin to include minimum performance requirements in specifications,” says E Tech’s Meyers. “One of the lowest-hanging fruits in these areas is motor and drive sizing and standardization. Many legacy solutions have focused on minimizing the quantity of unique spare parts, specifically standardizing on either a minimum drive size or grouping motors by a size range and assigning them the largest horsepower. We are beginning to see where clients are prioritizing ongoing energy cost versus the cost of additional spare parts by better aligning required sizing with actual applied horsepower.”

“We look at simple factors of conveyor lines to address energy usage,” says Tri-Mach’s Graham. “For instance, if you have two lanes of products, can they share a similar drive? Then, we’ll work to figure out if reducing the number of drives is possible. Basic mechanical solutions that require fewer motors and drive components are also considered.”

“Additionally, we focus on drive utilization to ensure that motor gearboxes are the right size and operate within the target frequency to maintain efficiency,” Graham adds. “Conducting speed studies is another critical step to ensure we size our components correctly.”

Mechanical automation can certainly help with energy usage by optimizing drive and motor performance, thereby reducing unnecessary energy consumption and improving overall system efficiency.

An indirect energy usage is the amount of hot water and time it takes to clean a conveyor, says Dorner’s Pardo. With clean-in-place features, such as belt lifters, tip-up tails and easy belt removal, the amount of time and water can be minimized. Inline conveyor cleaning can also be useful to reduce the amount of deep cleaning cycles, which saves time, water and energy.

Automation Integration: Retrofit for Automation or Buy New

There is merit to going about this either way, says Akona’s Adair. “Modifying an existing conveying system would probably be more cost-effective in the short-term, but you might be limited to the amount of modifications you can make. Now, if you end up purchasing a new system, you can make sure it has all the new and latest automation trends, but it will probably end of being more expensive, again in the short run.”

Purchasing new equipment is often the most straightforward path, as it’s built for specific applications and designed for the plant and available space, says Cory Williams, manager at PFI. “Often, though, processors seek to increase efficiency with their existing equipment to keep costs as low as possible. They may still be able to get most of what they want by adding one or two conveyors to their existing layout. This is easier on their budget. It’s never perfect to retrofit, as most processors understand, but it can work.”

Always consider the ROI — budget, downtime, maintenance, lifetime cost and food safety — when deciding whether to retrofit or buy new systems, Williams adds.

Existing conveyors can be upgraded with sensors, variable frequency drives (VFDs) and gates to enable automated start/stop operations and speed adjustments, based on product flow requirements, says Key’s Sanchez. Level sensors integrated with weight scales can automatically manage product flow, requesting more product when levels drop and halting flow when capacity is reached.

“At E Tech, we have both automated existing equipment and done completely new systems,” Meyers says. “The addition of sensors and VFDs, coupled with MES system upgrades, have proven to be a cost-effective solution for many of our clients.”

Modifying a line for automation most likely means adding sensors and communications, and this is where system integrators and conveyor vendors can help. “Multi-Conveyor knows it’s essential that partner OEM products integrated on any production line ‘talk,’” Miller says.

Miller adds that a perfect example comes from an e-commerce customer, who recently stated, “As we were visualizing how all of this (new automated conveyor line) was going to work, we worked very closely with Multi-Conveyor to build the controls so all of these pieces (OEM equipment) can communicate. For example, if one (labeler) line was to go down, we know right away that we need to slow the wrapper down. So, the controls that Multi-Conveyor built communicate upstream, tell the wrapper to slow down, tell the ARB (activated roller belt) table to stop sending boxes to the line, so we can figure out what’s going on with the line (upstream) to get it resolved. When they turn the line back on, the controls tell the wrapper to speed up and tell the ARB table to start going back and forth (diverting) again.” Multi-Conveyor’s electrical engineering team stepped up and took the only on-site, upfront technical support reins on calibrating the sensors, timing, controls and communications between OEM equipment, Miller says.

Guide Rails and Packaging Changeovers

Guide rails and brackets offer ease of functionality when it comes to adjusting to different line dimensions for various package types and sizes, says Rexnord’s Garwood. Many manufacturers, like Regal Rexnord, offer both manual and automatic options, with some products having the ability to do both. The benefit of automatic brackets is that they have preset conveyor guide rail adjustability that is fast and accurate without the need for tools. With these brackets, a simple push on the end knob moves the rod, clamp and guide rail. Within seconds, each rail holding point can be adjusted by inserting a spacer, saving valuable time during line changeovers.

Adjustable guiderails are a conveyor’s most critical asset when product changeover occurs for variable-size product running on the same production conveyor, Miller says. Guiderails can be adjusted manually or pneumatically. One Multi-Conveyor customer requested adjustable pneumatic-actuated guide rails that are triggered to be narrow or wider based on the width of the product sizes. That particular customer also requested a built-in traffic clamp to halt production at the line operator’s command. Divert and lane conveyors are often requested for multiple product size range conveyance. They can be fitted with a variety of devices, including manually operated or pneumatic gates, guides, fishtails and sweeps, activated by simplistic pin-pull to programmable logic controls.

“Many of our customers are challenged with smaller order sizes, which increases the quantity of project changeover,” says E Tech’s Meyers. “Specifically for this issue, some of these customers have addressed the labor-intensive tasks of product changeover by installing auto-adjusting guides, in addition to other time- and labor-saving automation, to allow the profitable execution of smaller order sizes. At E Tech, our role in these projects has been to collaborate with the client as their main automation partner to specify and execute the optimal system, based on their individual requirements.”

Final Thoughts on Performance and Safety

Integrated automation equipment, such as conveyors, should focus on hazard monitoring equipment to ensure that they run effectively, Graham says. With technological improvements, machines run faster, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) needs to be monitored to ensure peak performance.

Though we didn’t cover it, conveyor safety needs to be considered in any project, Miller says. Factors to consider may include (but are not limited to) motor heat shields, bearing covers, shaft cut-out guards, end caps, or Lexan (or equivalent) guarding. Hinged access doors or access covers are designed to require tools to remove; this prevents untrained operators with no tools from getting into dangerous areas of the conveyor system. Unfortunately, money is a key factor that causes some safety features to be bypassed. These may include pull cords along the conveyor, E-STOP buttons at critical locations, backstops (roll-back protection), both audible and visual start-up warning systems, and lockout/tagout devices.