36 n CONVEYORS AND MATERIAL-HANDLING April 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com Savings of £10,500 are baked into plastic belt upgrade A UK commercial bakery wanted to cut the maintenance and sanitation time of a conveyor belt that it was using to pass raw pastry through a machine on a savoury pastry line before the product was glazed with egg wash and transported to ovens. The existing wire belt could not be removed to allow deep cleaning, resulting in lengthy and costly manual cleaning while the belt remained in place. Due to the design of the wire belt, it was susceptible to damage during these sanitation processes, requiring regular and costly repairs and replacement. In addition, metal belts such as this are a potential cause of serious product contamination and are therefore not ideal for applications like this. The bakery therefore decided to change to a plastic belt which was robust and easily to clean. The open grid design of the HabasitLink M1885 ush grid belt lent itself well to the application because the egg glaze could pass over the pastries and drain easily through the belt, reducing the risk of accumulations. To accelerate the sanitation processes, a Habasit Saniclip belt-opening system was added, providing an easy-release rod retention system with a safe, non-slip surface, even in the wet, greasy environment of the bakery. Requiring only seconds to extract and reinstall, the tool-free belt-opening system allowed rapid removal and replacement of the belt, reducing both cleaning and maintenance downtime. Deep cleaning was now possible, resulting in superior hygiene. The plastic belt also ensured a much lower risk of contamination than the previous metal design, improving safety. Sections of the belt could be recovered and replaced, rather replacing the complete belt, extending the belt life and cutting maintenance and replacement costs. The bakery subsequently ordered and retro tted similar belts for all six of its processing machines. The longer belt lives have reduced the need for replacements. Previously each of the six lines needed three replacements per year. This has been reduced to just one replacement per year with the new modular belting. In addition, maintenance and labour time have been reduced eight-fold. The previous wire belts took two hours to re t. This has been cut to just 15 minutes with the new modular replacement. The cost savings from the upgrade amount to £6,900 for each belt, and £3,150 on installation and labour costs, giving a total saving of £10,050 a year. In addition, 69 hours of labour has been eliminated every year. n A UK bakery has saved itself more than £10,000 and 69 hours of labour annually by replacing its previous wire conveyor belts with modular plastic alternatives. There are also benefits in terms of hygiene and safety. Replacing an old metal conveyor belt with a modern plastic alternative has delivered substantial cost and time savings for the bakery The trend towards digitalised conveyor lines Frank Morassi, an intralogistics specialist with Turck, looks at the future of conveyor systems. Modularisation and digitalisation are top issues in mechanical and plant engineering, not least in intralogistics. The best way to satisfy rapidly changing customer requirements is with modular and exibly scalable conveyor lines. An ecient digitalisation strategy is needed to ensure high availability and to work with zero pressure accumulation. There is a trend away from centrally controlled and driven lines, towards decentralised control modules and roller drives directly in the eld. Conveyor line digitalisation and decentralised, cabinet-free controls oer several advantages. First, there is the bene t of simple scalability. If requirements change, digital conveyor modules can be combined to create new route layouts with little wiring eort. Smart I/O modules on conveyors not only provide control intelligence, but also I/Os for sensors and actuators – the latter primarily in the form of roller motors. The voltage for robust IP67 power supplies on the modules can be looped via M12 power cables. The connected motors need 24V or 48V supplies. Decentralised control modules reduce data trac signi cantly and also allow short cycle times. Conveyor lines tted in this way bene t from improved energy eciency because it is possible to switch o motor rollers that are not in use almost instantly. The digitalisation of the conveyor line also increases availability. Smart control modules can record the status of the connected motor rollers. An above-normal increase in the power being drawn can indicate an imminent failure of the drive. Monitoring these values continuously, allows warnings to be issued in good time, so that users can replace defective motor rollers as part of planned maintenance programmes. In this way, unplanned downtimes can be minimised.
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