By Owen Toomey
Project Engineer
Thomas Conveyor & Equipment Co
Thomas Conveyor provides custom stainless steel hygienic conveyor solutions for the food industry. Conveyors can be designed for washdown environments, and customized to fit your needs.
The product being conveyed will determine many aspects of the conveyor design.
This application’s product was a packaged pouch of crackers, inside of a washdown environment.
Customer needed a solution to receive product from the poucher, and convey the product up to elevation of the main line where it will be packed into a case, and palletized for shipment.
This conveyor was constructed with hygienic, washdown, grade 304, #4 polished stainless steel in a fully welded frame. For the incline belt, we used a white plastic, Intralox S1100 Flush Grid Friction Top with white rubber traction inserts, FDA approved. We utilized UHMW carry way runner, and UHMW return rollers, and these are removable without the use of any tools (tool-less). We used stainless bearings in thermoplastic housings, and an aluminum motor and reducer with stainless hollow output shaft. The bearings are stood-off from the frames, and there are clean-out holes along the side frames of the conveyor to clean the underside of the belt, and to allow of easy cleaning of all areas. There are also clean-out holes in the support legs so water can flow out and away from the conveyor.
We also supplied this conveyor with a remote E-stop push button mounted at the center of the conveyor. We can supply this with a prewired VFD, but this customer is planning to mount all of the controls inside of a control panel.
This conveyor can be customized to meet your hygienic conveyor requirements, and is currently part of our quick ship program, and can ship within 3 – 5 weeks.
Contact a Thomas Conveyor project engineer to discuss your next conveyor project at 844-220-0806.