Manufacturers need to solve complex operational and assembly challenges that require top or bottom exposure of products while conveying, turning, lifting, and placing items at multiple workstations. In some cases, using a traditional conveyor system may leave you feeling as if you’re Phil Dunphy holding up a hula-hoop with a model airplane coming right at you.

Fabricators and manufacturers of sheet metal assemblies who want to increase production efficiency and throughput can benefit from an integrated “direct product handling” conveyor system (we use the term “direct” to indicate that it is not on a pallet). For each process stage, special considerations may apply that require optimum orientation, presentation, and access while indexing products on the conveying line.

The life of an application engineer is never boring. Along with all the daily challenges that come with keeping the production line running, engineers searching for suitable solutions that can automate assembly operations when manufacturing complex products is just as entertaining as watching Tommy Boy – if you’re into that kind of thing.

Metal fabricators need material handling conveyor systems that enable them to cut, shape, and mold products accurately at different stages in the process. Conveying products directly may be one of the biggest challenges for fabricators and manufacturers concerned about the efficient handling and manipulation of wider products.

The Lift & Locate: the go-to solution for locating during assembly. But what happens when your customer’s process is a little outside the norm? Whether it’s a unique product, process, position, or proportion, Glide-Line’s custom solutions are always available. We provide a number of Lift & Locate conveyor units out of the box, but can customize any of them to your customers’ specifications: product weight and/or size restrictions, space limitations, or nearly anything specific to your customers’ applications. The best part? We can even give you the tools to customize the engineering designs yourself. But we’ll get to that later! First, some examples:

Your medical device manufacturer clients face all sorts of complex problems that have nothing to do with actually manufacturing products:

Selecting a manufacturer to meet your customer’s unique conveyor needs can be a challenge. Many of our competitors have great, basic options to choose from and therefore depend on you selecting a conveyor with predetermined lengths, widths, heights, belt styles, and drive locations. These options may help them standardize to reduce the cost, but may not meet your needs.

With traditional accumulation conveyor design, precision controlled movement is not normally part of the design requirement or operating principle. This may be fine, or it may be an issue - especially to partially complete products.

When conveying medical devices, preventing product damage is key. While traditional accumulation techniques are effective, they can give way to product damage due to hard stops. To prevent damage to a delicate medical device, you need to find an alternative style of conveying. Glide-Line's Zero Contact Zoned Conveyor is our solution.

Traditional pallet accumulation techniques get the job done (belt or chain running constantly, managing positioning with stops). But with this method, there are several flaws. Namely for transporting partially-completed products or products with some type of curing process.