Gravity Conveyor
Gravity Conveyor
(OP)
I am designing building a gravity power conveyor to move dirty dish trays about 45ft inside of a restuarant. Does anyone have a rule of thumb or a formula for the incline of the roller system?
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS Come Join Us!Are you an
Engineering professional? Join Eng-Tips Forums!
*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail. Posting GuidelinesJobs |
|
RE: Gravity Conveyor
or
Take an educated guess at the angle and make the leg supports adjustable.
Comprehension is not understanding. Understanding is not wisdom. And it is wisdom that gives us the ability to apply what we know, to our real world situations
RE: Gravity Conveyor
RE: Gravity Conveyor
Find a local roller conveyor company that has some used/scrap/new sections of roller conveyor laying around their warehouse. Call 'em up, make your pitch. Grab a few "dirty dish trays" before you leave. Stop by Lowes/HomeDepot on the way over and pickup a carpenter's inclinometer. It's all downhill from there. (erk! snicker!
TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com
RE: Gravity Conveyor
RE: Gravity Conveyor
TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com
RE: Gravity Conveyor
Point 2 - I've been in the machine design field long enough to know that ANY equipment intended for use around food has to meet some pretty strict codes, usually has to withstand high temperature washdowns, certain materials are verboten, etc.
Point 3 - My gut tells me to avoid any kind of rolling element bearings in this application because of the need for lubrication and their tendency to gum up. I would go for plain bearings, a.k.a. bushings, probably plastic. Gravity isn't a very strong driver in this case. And I think the internal friction building up over a period of time could be significant.
RE: Gravity Conveyor
Gravity is a horrid power choice, given the environment, and the level of sophistication available and the personnel turnover therein.
It needs to have a motor and a switch with an on position and especially an OFF position.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Gravity Conveyor
RE: Gravity Conveyor
Review the maintenance records, and follow them back to root causes.
Fix those, recurse, and you eventually get a better product, or at least more effective maintenance procedures.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Gravity Conveyor
I suspect that the root causes of the maintenance problems on the driven conveyor would have the same effect, create similar symptoms, on a gravity conveyor.
Hey, I'm not saying give up on the gravity conveyor. I'm saying understand all the facts before you make a financial commitment.
Also, do you really need cylindrical rollers? I've seen "skate wheel" conveyors work really well in gravity feed situations. The reason is that skate wheels have nearly no inertia compared to rollers.
RE: Gravity Conveyor
Seriously, the dishes could add significant weight and if you get them moving they will 'crash' at the end. I would take the advice of improving the belt you have.
RE: Gravity Conveyor
I agree that you would want to avoid a motorized system in a foodservice kitchen, no need to introduce another maintenance routine. It's unlikely that your local health code would require it to be "washdown", but it would likely need to be of corrosion free materials, whether plastic or metal. It would not have to be rated for incidental food contact on the "dirty side" of the kitchen.
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.