Roller chain conveyors are often the first solution that comes to mind when you start looking for cost-effective, heavy duty solutions for a client. However, these traditional conveyors come with a host of expenses, from expected maintenance costs to unthought-of innovation opportunity costs. When application engineers come to us for outside-the-box ideas, we have a solution that addresses these challenges. Here are four common roller chain conveyor maintenance costs the Zero Contact Zoned Conveyor reduces or eliminates.

Medical devices have important jobs to perform. From testing kits to surgical instruments to complex technology, there’s no room for error in assembly and no time to waste on damaged products. These elegant products need an equally elegant indexing conveyor solution, and that solution needs to have clean-room capacity, no jostling, and a completely controllable movement. Enter: the Zero Contact Zoned Conveyor from Glide-Line.

Often we find that the incorporation of manual assembly steps can be a good option for an assembly operation. Sometimes the payback wouldn’t exist by full automation, or other times it would be a very complex task for a machine. Either way, manual assembly may be a necessary part of your product build, but it doesn’t need to be inefficient or unsafe in the process.

Whether your stops are controlled manually or by using automation, they can encounter the same problems: inefficient operation of your conveyor, and product damage caused by herky-jerky movement on the line. While "stop-motion animation" might have worked alright for Gumby, anything resembling stop-motion needs to be eliminated from conveying fragile products, pronto.

Traditionally, customers accomplish indexing by either a series of pop-up stops, or starting and stopping a conveyor that’s moving your product. But how do you ensure fragile products are gently starting and stopping without slipping on the conveyor in each product zone? You can’t, and your client can risk the collisions typically associated with traditional indexing techniques. To solve this, you need a more elegant, more sophisticated handling solution.

So you’ve been wondering - why doesn’t my current conveyor prevent product damage? Shouldn’t that be one of the primary functions of a conveyor?

When your clients are working with you to integrate lightweight autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), they’re looking for the biggest bang for their buck.

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.

Upsizing conveyor components is the norm when conveying large or relatively heavy products. For items such as airplane wings and auto parts, this can be the most effective material handling solution. But traditional conveyor accumulation techniques can give way to product damage.

When moving larger and/or awkwardly shaped products directly on a conveyor, putting products on a more conveyable pallet capable of handling the contact driven by accumulation is typically the right conveyor system design. But unique products require unique solutions. Glide-Line’s Zero Contact Zoned Conveyor design solves this challenge. A Zero Contact Zoned Conveyor solution can offer a better way to accumulate a product without a pallet.