The Complete Handbook of Conveyors

Chapter 1: Understanding Conveyors

A conveyor is a machine that moves a load over a fixed path. That is the whole definition, and it is a useful one because it gets rid of the idea that conveyors are just motorized belts in warehouses. The fixed path is the key. A forklift is a mobility device because the path is variable. A conveyor, whether it is a two-foot gravity roller section in an assembly cell or a 40-mile overland belt in an iron ore mine, exists to perform the same task over and over: transfer material from a source, over a defined route, to a destination.

Understand that, and you immediately understand why conveyors matter so much in industrial operations. They are, at their core, a method of removing the human labor and the unpredictability of movement from a production process. When you pick up a parcel and walk it from one end of a room to the other, you are doing the work a conveyor does. But you are also introducing a variable physical action into the process, which costs time and energy and creates risk of injury and product damage. A conveyor replaces that variable action with a fixed, repeatable one.

The physical core of a conveyor is surprisingly simple. There are always three elements: a support structure, a traction surface, and a drive mechanism. In a belt conveyor, the traction surface is a looped belt. In a roller conveyor, the traction surface is the individual rollers themselves. In