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.
Glide-Line is a different kind of manufacturer. Innovative thinking with nimble development and manufacturing practices is better for you and your customer. We give you multiple cost effective standard options to choose from, meeting your design needs and wants. This should be a key factor to consider when choosing a manufacturing partner.
Is innovation a top priority?
Glide-Line’s range of customized standard conveyors would be completely custom builds to most other manufacturers. Originally we developed these to meet a single customer's demands, but because of our flexible, innovative manufacturing practices, we were able to develop and produce these without charging an arm and a leg. In fact, for many customized standards, there is no premium in cost or time at all! Still completely modular, we can customize sizes, widths, lengths, and drive needs to meet your application’s needs. That’s why we call them “customized standards” - they’re custom solutions without the custom price. This seemingly simple innovation makes us a top choice when you’re looking for a manufacturer for a customer’s unique needs.
Here are some examples of innovative customized standard conveyors we’ve developed to meet specific customer needs.
A solution with quick-adjustable conveyor strands to produce multiple SKUs with varying sizes
The patent-pending Centerline Adjustable Conveyor is a unique device because it answers the challenges of a customer producing multiple SKUs of varying size with the need to change the conveyor width on the fly. We developed this innovative solution for integrators and their clients who need to quickly adapt their lines for products or pallets of different sizes. In lieu of the adjusting guide rails for a product run (or for various products), the conveyor strands (beams) themselves can be programmed to adjust to varying positions to support the new run. This works well because conveyor beams have integral guides which are inherently more consistent and rigid than manually adjusted rails.
Space-saving stacked VTUs that aid in keeping downstream rates the same
Our innovative Dual Axis VTU is actually one of my favorite custom solutions. This device can be the answer to a difficult problem when dealing with elevation changes and downstream workflow. It is a VTU with two axes in one unit, or more simplified, two conveyors working independently housed in the same unit. This allows your client to lift the pallet or tray and while it is being loaded or unloaded above, while the second conveyor moves into the position of the first to continue feeding the downstream process or production, all the while keeping up with the desired downstream rate or cycle time. Read this post for an even more detailed explanation.
Solutions that rotate the conveyor itself to navigate corner or end transfers
The Conveyor Rotate Unit was a much-needed device. This unit helps aid in transferring a large pallet to an adjacent conveyor that can’t typically be transferred through a standard curve. It can transfer a standard workpiece pallet, a tray, or a panel in a 90-degree or 180-degree direction and can stop at any angle. Because it is servo driven, the Conveyor Rotate Unit allows for smooth, precise movement.
Economical vertical over/under transfers
The Low-Cost Mini VTU is one of our best used custom standard solutions. It really answers the need of a “economical” way to use an VTU in an over/under solution. It has its limitations as far as travel / lift, but you can usually purchase two or these units for less than the cost of one standard VTU. For customers without a height limitation for their product, or for those returning empty pallets, this VTU is typically a good fit that shows an innovative approach to vertical transfers.
Glide-Line stands above the rest with these devices. Our competitors could build a "work-around" or customize to suit, but that would likely require cumbersome and costly additions to their available systems, not to mention they would be adding engineering hours, labor cost and longer deliveries. No, thank you.
Glide-Line already has the solutions at hand to answer those difficult “how to's” when it comes to designing a system. I love referring to them as Customized Standards, because they truly answer the call of a Custom Solution, but they are Standard Designs with us.
Visit our Custom Standard Conveyor Solution Gallery for more examples, or check out our ebook The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Flexible Automation Conveyor Application Solution.
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