When conveying a wide product directly on a conveyor, conventional conveying systems can be bulky and inflexible. Conveying on a traditional roller conveyor, results in tremendously large radiuses and takes up a ton of floor space. Try doing things like adding custom features like VTUs or rotate units to the line and it gets even more challenging. In short, when conveying a wide product and the line needs a curved path, conventional conveyors often create a myriad of operational issues.

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.

Moving photovoltaic solar panels through an assembly line today is a delicate process that involves intricate movements, transfers, and rotations. Traditional systems may suffice when the product doesn’t rely on multiple assembly stages, or when it doesn’t require exact control during every step of the process. However, for relatively delicate wide products like solar panels, many manufacturing facilities are looking for a more economical conveyance solution that provides precise control and maximum configurability to help automate the processes for increased throughput – without compromising product quality.

Kevin Mauger was recently the Robot Industry Podcast's guest. They talked about culture, conveyors, configurators, the Amazon Effect, how to start a company, building a brand and changing your company to an employee owned, purposeful, positive entity.

Today’s manufacturer demands a custom system that can be quickly designed and delivered. Glide-Line has built its business around meeting this demand, allowing us to provide lead times half those of our competitors. Our conveyor is highly modular and designed intelligently, allowing us to quickly deliver conveyors and devices customized to your clients’ needs.

They’re light, powerful, and maximize your investment in your Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). Just like Muhammad Ali changed the game of boxing forever, AMRs have the potential to revolutionize manufacturing. By providing a new means of infinitely flexible automation workflow, plants can reduce their labor costs and improve margins in a highly competitive environment.

Ron Schwar is our featured employee spotlight this month. Ron has been with Glide-Line since 2005. As a product development engineer, Ron said that the two accomplishments he’s most proud of are the development of Glide-Line and its configuration tool, IMPACT!. He was also instrumental in the development and implementation of our unique manufacturing system.

Creative, custom and configurable conveyor systems are what we do best. When we found ourselves dissatisfied with the market’s current offerings – inflexible designs, as well as long lead times, poor customer service, and rising (and unnecessary) costs – we decided we could do it better. Following our own advice, we set out to create a product and supporting tools that would satisfy customer needs in ways no one else could.

Conveyor flexibility in an automated conveyor application is the ability to adapt an existing standard product as opposed to building and customizing a solution from scratch. Flexible solutions fit multiple needs, take less time to engineer, manufacture and assemble, are less costly, and can often accomplish your goal more efficiently without compromising the design.