Multi-functional conveyor devices make automation processes more efficient while saving clients money. The Lift Transfer Unit is a great example of this. Not only does it fulfill the traditional design to transfer a pallet or plate to a transfer conveyor or a spur line at a right angle, but it’s also highly configurable, functional, and controllable. Here’s how.

Glide-Line’s Workpiece Pallet may sound like a typical conveyor accessory, but it’s anything but typical. Our Workpiece Pallet is a workpiece that can be modified and machined to handle a customer’s fixture or jig configuration.

Configurability is an important feature of all our conveyors, and the Multi-Strand Transport Conveyor from Glide-Line is no exception. The Multi-Strand Transport Conveyor is a material-handling solution of two or more strands (including odd numbers), transporting panel-like products or large, platform-type fixtures from workstation to workstation.

Whether your client’s operation calls for stamping, forming, welding, or even swaging, the challenge of weight distribution for large products or pallets can be an issue when performing operations on a conveyor line. Instead of requiring a move to a workstation off the line, consider Glide-Line’s Heavy Duty Lift and Locate.

A lift and rotate unit is a standard, tried and true offering from traditional conveyor manufacturers. But Glide-Line has taken this standard offering and injected two doses of our signature creativity into the LRU to make it a flexible, creative solution in our modular conveyor automation lines.

Vertical transfer units (VTUs – otherwise known as pallet elevators) can perform functions that would otherwise require another piece – or multiple pieces – of equipment within a conveyor system. This solution saves the space that would have been taken up by ancillary equipment and makes the automated conveyor system more efficient to operate, assemble, and maintain. But one question we frequently receive about these vertical transfer units is about size and weight capacities.

Your client's automation process may require product elevation for a number of reasons. Visual inspection, part additions, or using a buffer to accommodate a slower process further down the line are just a few examples where a vertical lift conveyor application may be necessary. But why install a bulky, expensive application when you can accomplish what your clients’ processes need within the lift itself? There are a number of other uses for an enhanced elevator (or vertical transport unit, VTU) on the line that you might not have considered in the past.

IMPACT! is the most advanced, yet simplest, automation conveyor design software available. It combines the five elements every conveyor system design integration needs: CAD blocks Snap-to (magnetic) pairing/mating in SOLIDWORKS Firm, pricing Application calculations Part number generation

Customizing automated assembly conveyors can be compared to customizing a car. When talking to the dealer, you may have a specific feature in mind. If the dealer says the added feature requires customization, you’ll ask instead what’s standard – and then, see if a standard feature can be tweaked instead.

As you’re building an automation system for your client, spending time to choose a conveyor configurator may be the farthest thing from your mind. But which conveyor software you choose could have lasting effects on your entire conveyor-based assembly automation system, including how much it costs, how long it takes to design and deliver, and even how creative you can be in your solution.