Vertical conveyor
Vertical conveyors are systems of conveyor systems and in internal logistics used to convey product streams up or down. Vertical conveyors can often be found in the front zone of a high-bay warehouse , but also within production processes in food production, for serving palletizing systems or simply for negotiating different floors within a building. They usually transport a specific load carrier or a specific group of them. One or more levels of a conveyor system ( floors ) are connected to one another with a vertical conveyor .
A frequently used solution are ascending or descending belts. Such a belt conveyor , which is mounted at a certain angle in order to bridge a difference in height, can have the advantage that it can also cover a certain distance. The disadvantage, however, is that a lot of usable area is lost, since the device and the supports required for it take up a correspondingly large amount of space. By using a spiral conveyor or a vertical conveyor, a greater height difference can be bridged in a smaller area and conveyor lines can be planned more flexibly. With vertical conveyors there is a choice between a continuous conveyor (continuous conveyor) or a discontinuous conveyor (discontinuous conveyor).
Discontinuous conveyor
A discontinuous conveyor requires a buffer section in the inlet, since incoming products have to wait for the discontinuous conveyor to be ready to receive. The discontinuous conveyor takes over the product with the help of a platform or a roller conveyor or a belt conveyor mounted on this platform and then carries this platform to another level. Such a conveyor can only be used for lower throughputs because of the cycle time that is required for the input and output or for the upward and downward movement.
The movement takes place in two axes:
- y = vertical direction (lifting unit)
- z = transverse aisle direction (load handling unit)
The mechanics consists of:
- the frame that is firmly attached to the building. The hoist (rope or chain drive) and the guide for the lifting carriage are located on the frame .
- the lifting carriage on which the load handling device (LAM) is mounted. The lifting carriage is equipped with a device to prevent a fall in the event of a rope or chain break ( safety gear ).
Continuous conveyor
Continuous conveyors are better suited for higher throughputs . There are two different solutions in this group: the spiral conveyor or the continuous product conveyor . Both solutions can handle multiple products. A continuous product conveyor can be used for upright transport of products, which is available in two versions: L-conveyor (mat conveyor) and fork conveyor. For the continuous product conveyor, in most cases it will be necessary to accumulate incoming products in the inlet, since a mat (mat conveyor) or a fork (fork conveyor) is not always available. With the spiral conveyor there is no accumulation of the products, as it is constantly conveying and is always ready to pick up a product, even if there is the possibility of controlling the spiral conveyor in another way so that it would then be able to pick up product by product individually and to stop again, so that the best possible utilization of the conveyor track of the spiral conveyor is given. (e.g. preparation of pallet layers, etc.).
Spiral conveyor
A spiral conveyor has the advantage that it can be used with a minimal amount of control software, since the spiral conveyor is usually only equipped with one drive. The spiral conveyor can also work with very high throughputs and, depending on the manufacturer, at high speeds. The spiral conveyor requires little space, as no upstream or downstream accumulation technology is required to separate the products. Although the vertical transport requires a certain transport time because of the revolutions that the conveyor belt makes, the spiral conveyor can also be used to pick up a large amount of goods, so it can also be used as a goods buffer. Any products (cardboard boxes, trays, ShrinkPaks, bottle packs, plastic crates, primarily packaged single goods, printed matter, polybags and other limp products, bottles, cans, buckets, postal parcels, magazines, luggage, workpiece carriers and much more) can be conveyed on the continuous transport surface. Due to the twisted transport path (curve including slope), a product is always carried on a spiral conveyor in the diagonal surface of the product (diagonal from inside / top to outside / bottom). This is due to the climbing angle and the radius in which the conveyor belt is mounted. The transporting surface of the spiral conveyor belt is therefore often provided with a friction rubber coating that keeps the product stable in position during transport. Here it is important that this friction rubber coating always extends over the full width of the transporting surface, since otherwise the adhesive rubber coating does not maintain unconditional contact with the conveyed goods. If a product needs a flat support during transport, the use of a spiral conveyor is not possible, but this can practically be ruled out, as the spiral conveyor technology is always based on the product to be conveyed and is manufactured with a suitable angle of incline for the specific product. The drive motor of a spiral conveyor can also be controlled with a frequency regulator, so that wear and tear can be kept as low as possible. Products that are in contact with one another during input can be spaced apart by an increased takeover speed of the spiral conveyor so that the products do not touch or push away when they enter the radial area of the spiral conveyor. If the products rest against one another when they enter the spiral conveyor, the products can interlock with one another when they enter the radial region of the spiral conveyor. This can result in marks on the product or malfunctions on the spiral conveyor. This risk can be easily regulated and avoided using control technology. There are manufacturers who guide the transport track centrally on the underside without additional support guides (slide rails) being built on the outside of the transport track. Other flexible manufacturers offer spiral conveyors with central chain and inner / outer support guides (slide rails). Depending on the manufacturer, it is then advisable to serve the products centered, because the eccentric load on the conveyor belt is not suitable for every product. The constructive structure of a spiral conveyor in combination with the firm hold of the conveyed goods via a high friction force of the conveyor track enables products to be transported safely and gently at all times. If, for whatever reason, products from the following transport route back up into the spiral conveyor, the probability is very high that the product or the product carriers of the conveyor belt will be damaged. It is therefore important that, as with all other technical methods of elevation conveyance, a check for max. The product backs up. This avoids downtimes in the transport of goods or loss of production within a production plant.
L-conveyor or mat conveyor
An L-conveyor or mat conveyor is a product conveyor in which the products lie on a carrier that is suspended between some chains. The risk of product contamination is significant when conventional chains are used. Such a product conveyor has the disadvantage that it requires greater control expenditure, since in most cases a product-accumulating and product-separating conveyor line is necessary in front of it and must also be controlled. The space requirement can be somewhat narrower in width compared to a spiral conveyor, but due to the upstream jamming / separating transport tracks, the length in the production direction is significantly shorter in the case of a spiral conveyor. The height difference that can be bridged with just one drive motor is almost unlimited, but the number of mats / forks is limited and reduced in comparison to the spiral conveyor, so that the maximum possible throughput of the L or mat conveyor is considerably limited. Due to the system, this can be seen in the given product height in comparison to the height delta of the desired height to be bridged. To bridge larger differences in height, several spiral conveyors can be placed on top of one another and connected to one another via the central column. Another disadvantage of an L-conveyor or mat conveyor is the difficult-to-monitor product transition during input when small or conveyed goods of different dimensions are being transported, whereby incorrect product acceptance can lead to greater consequential damage to the product or the L or mat conveyor. In order to minimize such risks, it is important to seek professional advice so that product damage, considerable additional costs, downtimes or loss of production can be excluded or minimized.
Fork conveyor
A fork conveyor offers more flexibility in the installation options than an L-conveyor / mat conveyor. A fork conveyor is a product conveyor that takes the products from one conveyor with a fork and places them on another conveyor at another level. A fork conveyor of this type offers the possibility of inputting or outputting products at an angle of 90 degrees. This increases the possibilities for input and output combinations. Only a spiral conveyor is even more flexible, since the position of the spiral conveyor inlet in relation to the outlet can be freely selected at an angle of 5 degrees, which means that flexibility remains unmatched. Since the product carriers can be pushed into or out of the conveyor, a fork lift can also be used as a vertical sorting system. In such a sorting system, a product can be entered and output at any desired level, and it can be transported both up and down with one and the same product conveyor. The performance, and thus also the energy consumption of the drive, is considerably lower with a fork conveyor than with other systems, because only the product has to be transported and the forks keep each other in balance in the ascending and descending part. The only disadvantage to be taken into account here is that a fork conveyor is complex in the control system and, especially with small products, there is a high risk that they cannot be properly transferred to the transfer position for the fork when they are being conveyed. So that damage to life and limb can be ruled out, it is also of enormous importance that the fork conveyor is surrounded over a large area with gates (e.g. fence) so that no person, whether child or adult, is constantly in the area forks moving at high speed can advance without the fork conveyor automatically switching off and stopping in this case. Another difference between the fork conveyor and an L-conveyor or mat conveyor is the complexity of the control. In the case of an L-conveyor or mat conveyor, the input and output must run completely synchronously, whereas this is not necessary with a fork conveyor. This leads to a control that is simpler, but at the same time it also directly reduces the maximum possible number of conveyed goods that can be transported. With fork conveyors it is important that the products (if several are to be transported with one fork at the same time) are transferred to the receiving fork in a well-balanced manner, even if this is difficult for smaller products within an automated transport process, so that product loss or damage can be avoided .
Other names for product conveyors
- Goods lift
- Product conveyor
- Lifting belt conveyor
- Vertical conveyor
- Vertical conveyor
- Vertical steady conveyor
- Elevator
- Elevator / elevator
- Spiral Conveyor
- Spiral conveyor
- Mat conveyor
- L-conveyor
- Pallet conveyor
Individual evidence
- ↑ FEM 9.831 calculation bases for high bay storage and retrieval systems , point 3, page 3