48 n CONVEYORS AND MATERIALS- HANDLING April 2023 www.drivesncontrols.com Linear motor carriers: a flexible alternative to belt conveyors? Manufacturers must adapt constantly to raise productivity and output with minimal disruption to their operations. Some techniques, such as upgrading machinery or adding extra production lines, can be done only infrequently. Between such major changes, manufacturers need to be able to improve process settings and practices such as changeover procedures to raise efficiency. Conventional conveyors can be a barrier to progress, offering limited flexibility that demands extensive engineering effort to reconfigure. Simple changes often cannot achieve the improvements required. But making major changes usually requires significant support from vendors. As the main artery running through most production lines, intelligently designed conveyors can help maximise production output, avoid manual handling and ensure best utilisation of factory space. Configuring a conveyor system to optimise the operation of a facility is a skill that often involves customising standard off-the-shelf units or conceiving individual solutions to challenges such as space limitations or elevation changes. Buffer units are often needed to accommodate differences in the capabilities of the machines on a line and to enable the entire line to operate in a coherent, coordinated fashion. Conveyor vendors have many different options and configurations, including proprietary products that they can tailor to meet customers’ individual needs. Because conveyor systems are usually designed by specialists according to a brief, the result is usually ideal for a factory’s initial needs. But as those needs change, making adaptations to the conveyor system can be difficult. For example, changing stop positions implemented using pneumatic cylinders, sensors and solenoid valves can involve extensive software development, wiring changes and mechanical adjustment. One alternative is to use bidirectional linear conveyor modules (see box on the opposite pge) that allow reconfiguration of parameters such as speed and stop positions. Equipment owners can usually perform these changes themselves. Other potential benefits include the ability to perform processes such as mechanical assembly directly on board the modules, saving both process time and engineering overheads associated with removing and replacing the workpiece on a conventional conveyor. Below are examples of two manufacturers, both of which encountered such limitations when attempting to boost production using conventional conveyors. The first example is a Japanese automotive parts manufacturer that tried to raise output by cutting the cycle time for critical processes, while also increasing the conveyor speed to minimise the length of time that workpieces spent moving between processes. The company’s engineering team found that increasing the speed beyond a certain level was Linear-motor-driven carrier modules can offer a more flexible alternative to conventional conveyor systems for some applications, argues Yamaha which makes systems of this type. When using a conventional conveyor system (left), a motor manufacturer needed nine different jigs to handle three types of product, each in three sizes. Stop positions needed to be reset each time the product changed. By changing to a linear motor driven conveyor system (right), the manufacturer has been able to use just one jig and has cut set-up times by around 16 hours per month – equivalent to two days of operation.
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