By Owen Toomey
Project Engineer
Thomas Conveyor & Equipment Co
A logistics company had asked me to design a conveyor system to sort mixed parts, and send similar parts to specific discharge lines for storage.
The mixed parts would be introduced to the system on a pallet, where an operator would manually take similar parts off the pallet, and place them on a conveyable plate. We designed a bracket that mounts to the plate with a reflector at 1 of 3 heights.
The operator would mount a reflector at 1 of the 3 specific heights, depending on what type of product it is. The plate would then enter the system and be conveyed on a cam adjusted belt driven live roller conveyor (main line), where it would encounter 4 different discharge lanes with photo eyes at the first 3 lines. We mounted these photo eyes at different heights – to match the different heights of the bracket reflectors on the plates.
When the correct plate bracket reflector encountered the corresponding photo eye height, our pneumatic pop-up v-belt air transfer would be activated, and this would lift and transfer the plate 90° onto the correct discharge line. The plate would be conveyed to the end of the line on a cam adjusted live roller conveyor where it would hit a butt end stop, and the similar product plates will begin to temporarily accumulate.
Cam adjusted live roller conveyors are ideal for side loading, unloading, or temporary accumulation. The unique cam allows the tread roller drive pressure to be adjusted in seconds.
Once the accumulation backs up on the discharge line to the main line, a line full photo eye shuts down that discharge line, until the operator unloads / packs for storage the products, and removes the plates from the conveyor. Once the plates are being removed, the photo eye at the end of the line clears, and tells the system to turn the discharge line back on until we block the line full photo eye again.
The 2nd and 3rd lines will sort the other products onto their corresponding lines, and the final 4th line is the jackpot lane, where all other products would be conveyed (without a bracket), or any product that was misread by the photo eye (missed) would also go to this jackpot lane.
Incorporated into this system is a cardboard takeaway conveyor line, and a trash takeaway conveyor line. While the operators unload the pallet and place the parts onto the plates, the operator would also toss the trash under the gravity roller conveyor staging lines onto a slider bed belt conveyor underneath. This slider bed conveyor would convey the trash underneath the staging lines, then onto a cleated incline belt conveyor, where the trash would dump into a garbage cart for takeaway. The operator would toss any cardboard onto the cardboard takeaway conveyor, where it would be conveyed on a slider bed to a cleated incline belt conveyor, directly into the baler.
Thomas Conveyor supplied all the equipment, controls, PLC, UL control panel, mechanical, and electrical installation. The entire project was installed by my customer’s deadline, and the project was managed by Owen Toomey from start to finish. This system has met all of the expectations of my customer, and we are building a similar system for another location in the near future.
Contact Thomas Conveyor Project Engineer Owen Toomey to discuss your next project at 708-449-2100.