Category: Blog

When working in specialized environments, with unique machinery like high precision vacuum conveyors, or with specialized or even hazardous materials, it is exceedingly important to take every aspect of the task at hand into consideration during the design process. This early planning, in addition to ensuring the safety of your workers, sets the project up for a successful project outcome.

This same principle is advised across industries that require precision work and applications with high- and low-temperature zones, like the manufacture of micro polymer components, solar cells or other highly engineered products.

For this wide range of industries and applications, there is one solution that will serve them all well is steel belt technology.

Steel Belts: One of Your Top Solutions (and maybe even your only one)

Steel belts require no lubrication, are easy to clean, and can withstand hazardous temperatures of over 538 C and various chemical substances. In addition, they offer great thermal and electrical conductivity, all while providing an outstanding strength-to-weight ratio. Belt Technologies, with over six decades of experience serving customers globally in countless industries, can help to outfit your conveyor system.

Here are some product considerations:

Temperature:

High and low temperatures can influence the properties of a steel belt, and therefore, it is important the right material is selected to achieve optimal operation and lifetime. Our engineers will recommend a suitable alloy to meet your needs from our robust metal offerings.

Adjustments:

Sometimes a specific application requires adjustments to create the perfect product. If high precision is needed, a vacuum system might help reach the desired outcome. Vacuum applied beneath the steel belt surface creates an ideal flat surface to hold a multitude of products that can be precisely positioned along the conveyor’s path for printing, cutting, and pick and place operations.

A Case Study: Real-World Results

One of our OEMs required that two specific areas in his 32-foot-long (9.75m) vacuum conveyor achieve a crucial, repeatable belt positioning of max. 0.004” (0.1 mm) lateral and longitudinal while holding a flatness of just 0.0010” (.025mm) or better. This was necessary because the print had to be stacked at exactly the same position when the belt circled back to the printing station with the product still attached. Especially for micro polymer components, the stacking of the print levels has to be perfect to achieve good performance of the components. In this case, it is critical to get camber, or straightness of the belt, close to 0, which can be achieved through Belt Technologies’ production processes.

Due to the heat zone followed by the cooling zone in this application, there was a risk of the belt stretching and pulling itself back together within a short period of time, potentially causing positioning issues. To overcome this, we introduced forced tracking with side guides covering just the short distances of the two high precision printing areas.  This served to keep the belt in a perfect position where it counted while minimizing abrasion of the belt edges and avoiding waves in the belt itself.

Precision on the Move

Where possible, we recommend that side guides and support plates be made from low friction material like POM/Delrin. Where temperature forbids the use of such materials, we recommend stainless steel, but only in areas where absolutely necessary to avoid high abrasion of the belt. For specialty projects like these, it is an advantage and privilege for Belt Technologies to be on board right from the start to help make key decisions in the design process.

If you have any questions or are ready to start designing a future production line, we invite you to reach out to one of our sales engineers. Contact us to learn more about how we can put our custom solutions to work for you. We’ll work hard to ensure your project’s success.

Let’s Celebrate Hardworking Metal Belts

The word “workaholic” often comes with a negative connotation. But if you ask any of us here at Belt, we’d argue that the word (and work ethic) should be celebrated. To our surprise and chagrin, a Google search has helped us realize that, to an extent, it has been.

July 5 is National Workaholics Day. While we’ll leave the party planning to you, we can gladly offer an idea on WHAT to celebrate. Read on.

Metal Belts Work in Even the Most Difficult Environments

Unlike polyester, nylon or cotton belts with rubber or plastic covers, metal belts love to perform—and well!—even in hostile or caustic environments. Nothing slows down their operation—not even extreme temperatures—hot OR cold. This makes them a perfect solution in food processing, in particular.

Metal Belts Outshine Their “Coworkers”

Metal belts are unsusceptible to long-term wear and tear such as stretching or warping. Metal timing belts, conveyor belts and conveyor belt systems offer durability and strength while maintaining a lightweight flexibility for smooth, continuous operation. Their average lifespans range from 500,000 cycles for complex timing belts to upwards of 5 MILLION cycles. And, because they don’t require any sick or vacation days, their eagerness and willingness to perform surely classify them as workaholics and maybe even Employee of the Month (or Year).

Metal Belts Help to Automate Your Facility (And Your Workload!)

The high tensile strength of steel belts makes them exceptionally resilient, and helps prevent jams in robotic automation. Common tasks like lifting, moving and sorting, allow for increased production rates and 40 percent efficiencies over other warehouse designs. Stands to reason, the more metal belts and automation in your facility, the more savings and greater efficiencies you’ll realize.

Get Your Party Hats Ready

If you’re looking for a way to keep production up and running smoothly, but would like to automate a process so you don’t have to become a workaholic yourself, we hope you’ll consider one of our workhorses. Sit down, put your feet up and peruse our website for some ideas on what “hire” to make. Or, if you have specific questions or would like to explore a custom solution, we hope you’ll contact us. Maybe we can celebrate together.

By Belt Technologies

In the United States, one in six people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year from foodborne diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Concern over contagious diseases continues to rise, with greater importance placed on prevention strategies in every sector of private and public life.

June 7 is World Food Safety Day, an initiative created jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Under the theme “Food safety, everyone’s business,” the campaign promotes global food safety awareness and calls upon countries and decision-makers, the private sector, civil society, United Nations organizations and the public to act.

Food Safety Is Our Business

Food safety is a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play—from farm to table—to ensure the food we consume is safe and will not damage our health. As major players in that chain, food manufacturers know the importance of maintaining hygienic processing to safeguard food safety, and the significant costs when they fail to do so.

One speck of food on a conveyer, no matter how small, that allows the growth of microorganisms, can quickly taint an entire production run. With current DNA mapping able to trace contamination back to its source, a food manufacturer’s entire brand can take a huge hit from a recall or worse. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is changing the food processing industry by shifting the focus from responding to foodborne illness and foreign material contamination to preventing it.

Clean Conveyors, Safer Food

Conveyor belts are an essential part of food processing—long, complex systems that move lots of product with speed and efficiency. Keeping them clean is a top priority of food processors, as contamination can move at great speed before being detected. That’s why stainless steel has become the finish of choice for conveyor belts in the food industry.

From meat and seafood to frozen pizzas and dairy products, stainless steel metal conveyor belts are hygienically superior to other belts for the cooking, freezing and handling of edible products. Versatile, durable and easy to design and manufacture for any food processing system requiring exceptional results, stainless steel metal conveyor belts prove their worth day in and day out.

Solid stainless steel conveyor systems do not require lubrication and do not outgas, eliminating the risk to product flavor. Furthermore, they do not fray or generate particulates that can contaminate food.

The solid, non-porous surface of endless metal belts resists bacteria and provides an overall cleaner surface area for transporting edible products. Thanks to their high temp and corrosion resistance, stainless steel conveyor systems are also easy to clean with common methods such as chlorine washes, high-pressure steam, high-pressure washes and more.

Stainless steel conveyor systems by Belt Technologies are designed for easy access, providing savings in facility maintenance and cleaning labor. In addition, we design and build them with your application in mind. Learn more about how our systems can serve the specific needs of your production. Contact us today.

By Alan Wosky, President

May is National Inventors Month, which was created to promote “the positive image of inventors and the real contributions they give to this world.” At their essence, inventors are problem solvers. They see a need or problem and are driven to find a solution.

Problems? Meet Solutions

Our stainless steel belts are designed to address issues common with other belt types. For instance, HTD or flat neoprene belts generate particulate, making them problematic for food and pharmaceutical processing, something that doesn’t happen with metal belts. In addition, metal belts do not require lubricants, do not generate dust particles, do not outgas, and can be sterilized, making them ideal for cleanroom environments.

As another example, unlike the links of a chain, a metal belt is a single element, so it doesn’t generate any component friction that requires lubrication. This helps keep the system clean, as mentioned above, while also reducing system maintenance and improving reliability.

When it comes to making better products, we also take the environment into account. Our stainless steel products are made with recyclable materials and generally higher recycled content than alternative belts. Our stainless steel is actually made from 60–80% recycled material. Further, we recycle our metal scrap and use eco-friendly cleaning solutions where we can.

Solutions Created Just for You

Paying it forward, our products allow other engineers to enhance and improve the production of their own designs. The features and benefits of metal belts make them ideal for a wide range of applications, essentially serving any industry that relies on assembly lines and automated production systems.

Our experienced engineers use sophisticated technology and innovative processes to design and produce custom metal drive tapes, timing belts and conveyor belts to solve a wide range of automated manufacturing needs. They work with your engineers to create unique, metal conveyor belt components or complete conveyor systems fabricated to meet your exact specifications to maximize product throughput and quality.

For more than 50 years, Belt Technologies’ steel belts have provided customers a more effective solution for transporting components, driving equipment, and producing and packaging food. Contact us to learn more about how we can put our custom solutions to work for you, during National Inventors Month or anytime. You can also download our Design Guide and Engineer’s Reference for Metal Belts, which details the fundamentals of metal belt design and application.

April 4–12 is National Robotics Week (RoboWeek), recognizing robotics technology’s emerging importance in American innovation and a wide range of applications. Those fields include transportation, medical, manufacturing, food processing, national defense and security. Increasingly, robotics is enabling students of all ages to learn important science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts and inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM fields.

Robotics technology and automation systems have made significant advances in such fields by providing highly accurate and repeatable motions. During National Robotics Week, we’re proud of the part we play in robotics technology. Our stainless steel drive tapes, made from the same superior materials of our endless metal belts, are used every day in applications where repeatable and highly accurate motion profiles are required.

The features of the stainless steel construction surpass those of other belt materials:

• Virtually non-stretchable
• High resistance to extreme temperatures
• Vacuum compatible
• Cleanroom compatibility
• No lubrication necessary
• A particulate-free environment
• High strength-to-weight ratio
• Accurate and repeatable

Meeting a High-Stakes Demand on Deadline

Our stainless steel drive tapes were the ideal choice for the robotics applications used by a recent customer, a manufacturer of small semiconductor devices. They required a high degree of precision and repeatable accuracy while performing in a sterile, vacuum environment. Metal drive tapes perform with near-zero backlash, optimizing positioning accuracy. Stainless steel is clean and durable, able to withstand unique operating conditions including extreme temperatures, cleanroom and vacuum environments. With a quick turnaround on our drive belt solution, we helped our customer meet their original production schedule.

To deliver the precision expected of robotics technology, customers like these rely upon the superior quality of our stainless steel drive tapes and metal belts. During National Robotics Week (and every week), we salute the professionals who are innovating with robotics, and those who are just now getting a glimpse at what a future in STEM offers.

If your business is innovating with robotics technology, our customized stainless steel drive tapes and timing belts can meet your application demands. Contact us and let us know what we can solve for you today.