Conveyor and material-handling system installation field guide

What conveyor work is, and why the nip point defines it

Conveyor and material-handling installation is the work of building the machinery that moves product through a building, a belt down a warehouse aisle, a bank of powered rollers feeding a sorter, a chain dragging totes through a plant, a screw moving bulk material through a process line. Most of the job is mechanical and electrical: set the structure level and square, mount the drives, wire the motors and controls, and tune the flow so product moves without jamming.

The fact that defines safe conveyor work is the nip point. Where a moving belt meets a pulley, where a chain meets a sprocket, where two rollers run together, there is an in-running pinch that will pull in a glove, a sleeve, or a hand and take a finger or worse before the person can react. That single hazard drives the three non-negotiables of the trade: guard the nips, put e-stops within reach, and lock out the stored energy before anyone reaches into the machine.

Everything else is quality and uptime. An out-of-level, out-of-square frame jams and wears and throws the belt off track. A drive sized wrong stalls under load. Controls that are not commissioned right let product collide and pile up. Get the structure straight, wire the drive and controls, and prove the flow. But the part that decides whether someone goes home with all ten fingers is the guarding, the e-stops, and the lockout. The drive and motor side of this work cross-links to the motor control center commissioning and motor starting guides.

What is a nip point on a conveyor?

A nip point is the in-running pinch where two moving surfaces, or a moving surface and a fixed one, converge and draw inward. On a belt conveyor it lives where the belt wraps the head pulley, the tail pulley, the snub rollers, and the return idlers. On a chain conveyor it lives where the chain engages every sprocket. On a roller line it lives between adjacent rollers and at the drive. These are the spots that show up in amputation reports year after year, because the moving surface grabs and pulls before the body can pull back.

The mechanism is what makes it deadly. A nip does not need to be fast or powerful in the way people picture danger. A belt moving at conveyor speed will catch a loose glove at the pulley, and once the glove goes in, the hand follows, and the machine does not stop because it caught something. The reaction time a person has is measured in fractions of a second, and it is never enough.

Treat the head and tail pulleys, every sprocket, the drive coupling, and every transfer nip as a hazard that must be guarded, reached by an e-stop, and isolated before service. This is the framing the entire install hangs on. OSHA machine-guarding requirements and ASME B20.1, the safety standard for conveyors and related equipment, both govern here, and the conveyor manufacturer's documentation calls out the specific guarded points for that machine. Confirm the requirement against the adopted regulation, the standard edition, and the AHJ before you sign off on guarding.

Guarding the nip points and the moving parts

Guard every nip point and rotating part a person can reach. That means barrier guards over the head and tail pulleys, over the drive sprockets and chains, over the coupling between motor and gearbox, and over any transfer where two belts or two roller beds meet. The guard has to keep a hand out of the nip while the machine runs, and it has to stay on, because a guard sitting on a shelf next to the conveyor protects nobody.

The screw conveyor earns its own line. A screw, or auger, is a meat grinder. The flight passing the trough wall is a shear point along its entire length, and an uncovered screw will take an arm. The trough cover stays bolted or clamped down, and where the design uses an access cover that opens, it should interlock so raising it cuts power to the screw. Do not run a screw with the cover off to watch the flow.

Guard openings follow reach-distance rules. A guard can have an opening for product or maintenance access, but the size of that opening at its distance from the hazard has to be small enough that a hand cannot reach the moving part through it. OSHA's machine-guarding and power-transmission requirements give the safe-opening and safe-distance tables, and ASME B20.1 covers the conveyor-specific guarding. Guarding is the protection that keeps the nip from reaching the person, so hedge the specifics to OSHA, ASME B20.1, the manufacturer, and the AHJ, and verify the adopted edition before you build the guard.

Emergency stops along the line

An emergency stop has to be reachable from wherever a person can be caught. On a long conveyor that usually means a pull-cord, a cable running the length of the machine that drops the line when pulled from anywhere along its run. On shorter equipment and at workstations it means e-stop buttons within reach of the operator position. The point is the same: a person caught in or near the machine has to be able to stop it without moving toward the hazard to find the button.

Pull-cords have rules that get missed. The cord should be tensioned and supported so a pull anywhere along it trips the switch, and the switch should latch so the line stays down until someone resets it deliberately. A cord that sags out of reach, or one that springs back and lets the line restart on its own, is worse than none because the operator counts on it.

Decide what the e-stop stops. A single conveyor stopping while the upstream line keeps feeding it just buries the jam, so e-stop zoning is part of the design: the stop has to drop the section of line that creates the hazard, and often the whole connected flow. ASME B20.1 addresses where emergency stops are required and the exception for conveyors guarded by location, meaning mounted high enough overhead that a person cannot reach them. Confirm the placement, the reach, and the stop logic against ASME B20.1, the manufacturer, and the AHJ.

Why lock out a conveyor before clearing a jam?

Because a conveyor restarts, and it restarts on whoever is reaching into it. Lock out and tag out the energy before anyone clears a jam, frees a stuck product, or services the machine. A conveyor is not like a hand tool you set down. It runs on automatic control, it takes a start signal from an upstream sensor or a PLC, and it can step back on while a person has both hands in the nip clearing a box. An e-stop is not lockout. An e-stop can be reset by someone who does not know you are inside the machine.

Stored energy is the second killer. A loaded incline conveyor wants to run backward when the drive releases, and that runback will crush a person standing below the load unless the machine is physically blocked or held by a backstop that you have verified. A gravity take-up holds a counterweight under tension that drops when you release the belt. Springs, raised loads, and material backed up in a chute all hold energy that has to be relieved or blocked before the body goes in.

The sequence is the standard lockout sequence: notify, shut down, isolate every energy source, apply your own lock and tag, release or block stored mechanical energy including the take-up and any incline runback, and verify zero energy by trying to start before you trust it. Clearing a jam with the conveyor running is the most common way people are killed and maimed on these machines, and it happens because the jam looks quick and the lockout looks slow. It is not quick. Lock it out. Hedge the LOTO program to OSHA's control-of-hazardous-energy requirements, ASME B20.1, the manufacturer's service instructions, and the AHJ.

Conveyor types by material and flow

Pick the conveyor type by what it carries and how the product has to flow. Unit handling, boxes and totes and cases, runs on belt and roller. Bulk material, grain and aggregate and process solids, runs on belt, screw, drag chain, and pneumatic. Overhead and sortation are specialized for floor space and for splitting flow. Each type puts its nip points in different places, which changes where the guarding goes.

The table below is the working shorthand. The drive, the controls, and the safety approach all follow from the type, so settle the type before the layout.

Belt conveyors: belt, pulleys, idlers, and take-up

The belt conveyor is the workhorse of unit and bulk handling. The belt rides on a head pulley that drives it and a tail pulley at the far end, supported between them by idlers or a slider bed, with snub pulleys to increase belt wrap on the drive and a take-up to hold tension. Every one of those wrap points is a nip, so the install is as much about where the guards go as where the bearings bolt.

Tension is the variable that most affects whether the belt behaves. Too loose and the belt slips on the drive pulley, glazes, and slips more. Too tight and you overload the bearings and stretch the belt. The take-up sets that tension. A screw take-up adjusts by hand and suits shorter belts. A gravity take-up hangs a counterweight that holds steady tension automatically and is the usual answer on longer runs where the belt stretches more than a screw take-up can follow. That counterweight is a falling hazard under it, so it gets guarded too.

The belt splice is the part that fails if it is done poorly. A mechanical lace or a vulcanized splice has to run square and clean through the pulleys, and a crooked splice pulls the belt off track every time it comes around. Set the take-up, square the splice, and the belt has a chance to run centered before you ever touch a training idler.

Roller conveyors: gravity, powered, and MDR

Roller conveyors come in two families. Gravity roller has no drive at all; product rolls down a set slope, which makes it cheap and simple and limited to where you can give up the elevation. Powered roller turns the rollers under power so the line can run level and controlled. The powered version is where most warehouse and distribution work lives.

Older powered lines drive the rollers from a line shaft running under the bed, with a belt or band off the shaft spinning each roller. The current standard is the motorized driven roller, the MDR, which puts a low-voltage brushless motor inside the roller tube itself. One powered MDR drives a short zone of slave rollers through bands, and a controller card runs that zone. Typical MDR runs handle lighter unit loads, often under about 75 lb per zone at speeds up to roughly 180 ft per minute, but the limits depend on the roller and the controller, so size to the manufacturer's rating.

The reason MDR took over is accumulation. Because each zone is independently powered and watched by a photo-eye, the line can stop one zone while the next keeps moving, so product backs up without pressure between cases. That is zero-pressure accumulation, and it is the feature that lets a sorter or a scanner meter product without crushing it. The nips between driven rollers are real, so guard them and confirm the load, speed, and zoning against the manufacturer's data and the AHJ.

Screw, pneumatic, and overhead conveyors

These three are the specialty types you meet less often, and each carries its own hazard signature. The screw conveyor moves bulk solids by turning an auger flight inside a trough. It is efficient and enclosed, and it is the single most unforgiving conveyor for entanglement, because the flight is a continuous shear point against the trough. The cover stays on and bolted, and any opening interlocks to kill power. There is no safe way to reach into a running screw.

Pneumatic conveying moves dry bulk through a pipeline on a stream of air, so the product hazard is mostly enclosed, and the moving-part hazards concentrate at the blower and the rotary valves that meter material into the line. Those rotary valves have severe nip and shear points and have to be locked out before anyone clears a plug.

Overhead conveyor hangs loads from trolleys riding an overhead track, used where floor space is short or product has to move through a process up in the air. The drive is usually a chain and sprocket, so the nips are overhead, and the added hazard is the load itself, swinging or dropping over people working below. Guard the drive nips, control what passes over occupied areas, and treat the line per the manufacturer and ASME B20.1.

The drive: motor, gearbox, VFD, and take-up

The drive is the motor, the speed reducer, and the coupling that turns the conveyor, plus the take-up that holds belt tension on a belt machine. The motor turns through a gearbox that drops the speed and multiplies torque to match the conveyor, and the coupling between them is a rotating nip that gets guarded like any other. Size the drive to the loaded conveyor, the incline, and the start condition, not just the running load, because a conveyor has to break away a full belt from a dead stop.

Speed control and starting belong to the motor side. Many conveyor drives run on a variable frequency drive so the line speed can be set and changed, and the VFD also gives a controlled soft start that eases the belt into motion instead of slamming it, which matters on a loaded incline where a hard start can shock the structure and the splice. The starting method, the VFD, the soft start, and the across-the-line versus reduced-voltage decision are covered in depth in the motor starting methods guide, and the contactors, overloads, and feeders that power the drive are covered in the motor control center commissioning guide. Use those for the electrical sizing and protection.

The take-up keeps the belt at working tension as it stretches and as load changes. On an incline conveyor the drive train also carries a backstop, an anti-runback device that keeps a loaded belt from rolling backward when the drive releases. Verify that backstop before anyone trusts it during service, because the runback it prevents is a crushing hazard.

Why does a conveyor belt wander?

A belt wanders because something it touches is not square, not level, or not clean, and the rule behind all of it is simple: the belt moves toward the end of the roller it contacts first. Tracking, keeping the belt centered, is the number one nuisance on belt conveyors, and most of the cure is in the install, not in chasing it after.

The usual causes rank in a short order. Pulleys or idlers out of square with the frame steer the belt toward the edge that touches first. A pulley that is not level lets the belt drift to the low side. Off-center loading shifts the load's center of gravity and pulls the belt toward its light edge. Material building up on a pulley creates a high spot that acts like a crown and throws the belt. Fix the cause, do not just crank an adjustment to fight it.

The hardware that keeps a belt centered is the crowned pulley, the snub roller, and the training idler. A crowned pulley is larger in diameter at the center, so the belt rides up toward the high center and self-centers. Snub pulleys and training idlers give you adjustment when squaring and leveling alone do not hold it. The sequence that works is square and level the frame first, set the take-up tension, run the empty belt and watch where it drifts, then make small adjustments and let the belt settle over several passes before the next one. Tracking is a tuning job that starts with a true frame, so confirm the procedure against the belt and conveyor manufacturer's instructions.

The structure: level, square, and supported

The structure is the frame, the legs, the hangers, and the transitions that hold the conveyor in line, and the quality of the whole install rides on it. A conveyor that is out of level or out of square jams, wears its components fast, and throws the belt off track no matter how well you tune the rest. The frame is what you get right first, because nothing downstream fixes a crooked frame.

Level matters in two directions. The conveyor has to sit level across its width so the belt does not drift to a low side, and it has to hold the intended grade along its length, whether that is dead level or a designed incline. Floor-mounted conveyor sits on legs that get shimmed and anchored to a real floor, not floated on an uneven slab. Overhead and ceiling-hung conveyor rides on hangers that have to carry the load and hold alignment without sagging between supports.

Transitions are where lines meet and where trouble starts. The point where one conveyor hands product to the next, where a belt section meets a roller section, where the grade changes from incline to flat, all of those need the elevations and the gaps set right so product transfers cleanly and does not catch. Set the structure level, square, and supported, and verify the layout against the manufacturer's drawings and the project documents.

Aligning the pulleys and the frame

Alignment is squaring and leveling the components so the belt and the product run straight. The frame has to be straight along its length, the pulleys parallel to each other and perpendicular to the belt centerline, and the whole assembly level unless it is a designed grade. This is the precision that decides whether the belt tracks and whether the product flows without binding.

A pulley out of parallel is the most direct cause of mistracking, so the pulleys get checked against each other, not just eyeballed against the frame. A laser or a string line down the conveyor centerline gives you a straight reference to set the pulleys and idlers square to, and a precision level confirms the cross-level at each pulley. Small errors compound over a long run, so a pulley a fraction of a degree off at one end can put the belt against the frame at the other.

Do the alignment before you load the line and before you fight the tracking, because chasing a wandering belt on a frame that was never squared is wasted time. Square the frame, set the pulleys parallel and level, then track the belt. Confirm the alignment tolerances against the conveyor manufacturer's instructions.

The controls: PLC, sensors, and integration

The controls run the flow. A PLC or a network of zone controllers reads the sensors along the line and decides what runs, what stops, and where product goes, and it ties the conveyor into the larger system, the warehouse management system, the sorter logic, the scanners that read each case. The controls are what turn a row of motors into a line that meters product without piling it up.

Photo-eyes are the primary sense. A photo-eye across the belt sees whether product is present at a point, and the logic uses that to detect a jam, to hold a gap between cases, to confirm a divert fired, and to drive accumulation. On an MDR line every zone has its own photo-eye, and the zone logic uses it to stop a zone when the next one is full so product backs up without pressure. That zero-pressure accumulation is a controls feature as much as a hardware one.

Integration is where conveyor controls meet the rest of the plant, and it is where commissioning takes the longest. The conveyor has to talk to the WMS or the host that tells it where product goes, the sortation logic has to fire the right divert at the right moment, and the scanners and the controls have to agree on what each case is. The motor control center commissioning guide covers the power-side control devices, the contactors and overloads and the control wiring, that sit between the PLC and the motors. Wire and check the controls against the manufacturer's drawings and the integration documents.

Photo-eyes, zoning, and zero-pressure accumulation

Sensors and zoning are how the line meters product. The photo-eye is the common one, an emitter and receiver that breaks a beam when product passes, mounted in the frame so it sees the gap between cases and the presence of product at a control point. Reflective and through-beam types each suit different spots, and a photo-eye aimed or mounted poorly is a phantom jam waiting to happen, reading product that is not there or missing product that is.

Zoning divides the conveyor into short controlled segments. Each zone runs its own drive and watches its own photo-eye, and the control logic decides whether that zone runs based on whether the zone ahead is clear. String the zones together and the line accumulates product, holds it, and releases it on demand. Zero-pressure accumulation means product backs up zone by zone without the cases pressing on each other, which protects fragile product and lets a scanner or a sorter pull cases one at a time.

Singulation is the related trick. Where product enters at random spacing, the zone logic spaces it out to a set gap so the downstream sorter or scanner gets one case at a time at a known interval. Set the photo-eye positions and the zone timing during commissioning, and tune them against the real product mix, because the spec spacing rarely matches what the boxes actually do.

Power and wiring the drives and controls

The electrical scope splits into power and controls. Power feeds the conveyor motors, often from a motor control center that holds the starters and overloads, and each drive or zone needs a disconnect within reach so it can be isolated for service and locked out. Bucket the feeder sizing, the overcurrent protection, and the grounding to the electrical code and to the motor control center commissioning guide, which covers the starters, the overloads, and the control power that sit between the supply and the motors.

Cable management is its own job on a conveyor, because the machine is long, sometimes moving, and full of nip points that will eat a cable left loose. Wiring runs in tray or conduit along the frame, kept clear of the belt and the moving parts, and where a section of the conveyor moves or extends, a festoon system or a cable carrier lets the wiring travel with it without snagging. A cable drooping into a pulley becomes a fault and a hazard at once.

Disconnects and isolation tie back to the safety case. Every drive needs a way to be cut and locked, the control power needs its own isolation, and the layout has to let a technician lock out the section being serviced without dropping unrelated parts of the line if that is the design. Size and protect the wiring per the adopted electrical code and the AHJ, and coordinate the motor and starter side with the motor starting methods guide.

Transfers, merges, and diverts

Transfers are where flow joins, splits, or changes direction, and they are where product gets damaged and jams start. A merge brings two lines into one, a divert pushes product off to a branch, and a transfer hands product from one conveyor to the next. Each one is a controlled handoff that has to happen at the right moment, which is why diverts and merges carry the densest sensor and timing logic on the line.

The mechanical detail at a handoff is the gap. Two conveyors meeting leave a space where a small or soft product can nose down and stall, so the transfer gets set with the right elevation drop and often a dead-plate or a transfer roller bridging the gap so product slides across instead of falling into it. Set those elevations and gaps during the structure work, because a transfer that catches product will jam no matter how good the controls are.

Diverts and the nips they create get guarded like any moving part. A pop-up divert, a pusher, a steerable wheel, each has moving elements that pinch, and they fire under control with product moving past, so the guarding and the e-stop coverage have to account for them. Set the transfer geometry to the manufacturer's drawings and prove the divert timing during commissioning.

Load, capacity, and the incline limit

Capacity is throughput, weight, and speed together, and the drive gets sized to the worst case of all three. Throughput is how many units or how much bulk per hour the line has to move. Weight is the load per foot of belt or per zone of rollers. Speed sets how fast it all runs, and the three combine into the load the drive has to start and sustain. Size to the loaded, starting condition, because breaking away a full belt takes more than running it.

The incline is its own limit. A belt or a roller line can only carry product up so steep a grade before the product slides or rolls back, and that maximum angle depends on the product, the belt surface, and whether the belt is cleated or plain. Push past the angle and product slips back into the line behind it, which is both a jam and a quality problem. A loaded incline also wants to run backward if the drive lets go, which is why the backstop and the lockout matter most on inclines.

Match the conveyor to the real product, not the spec sheet ideal. A line rated for one case size and weight behaves differently when the product mix changes, so confirm the load, the speed, and the incline limit against the manufacturer's rating and the actual product, and size the drive with the margin the manufacturer calls for.

Commissioning: prove the flow and the safeties

Commissioning is where you prove the line runs and prove it stops, and the safeties are not an afterthought to it. Start with a no-load run: turn the empty conveyor and watch the belt track, listen for bearings, confirm the drive direction and speed, and let the belt settle and track over several passes before any product goes on it. A belt that mistracks empty will only get worse loaded.

Then load it and run the flow. Put product on at the design rate and confirm the throughput, watch the accumulation hold without pressure, confirm the photo-eyes detect product and gaps, and check that the diverts fire to the right lanes on the right cases. This is where the controls and the integration get shaken out, and where the spacing and the timing get tuned to the real product instead of the assumed product.

Prove every safety before the line is handed over. Pull every e-stop and every pull-cord and confirm each one drops the section it is supposed to drop and that the line will not restart until it is reset. Confirm the guards are all on. Walk the lockout and confirm every drive can be isolated, including the stored energy in the take-up and the incline backstop. A commissioning that proves the flow but skips the safeties is not finished. Confirm the commissioning scope against the manufacturer, ASME B20.1, and the AHJ.

Maintenance: belt, bearings, lubrication, and take-up

A conveyor is a high-cycle machine, so maintenance is preventive or it is a breakdown. The belt wears, glazes, and stretches, and the splice is the first thing to fail, so the belt and splice get inspected on a schedule and the take-up gets checked to hold tension as the belt stretches. A belt run loose slips and glazes; a belt run too tight cooks bearings. The take-up is the adjustment that keeps it in the band.

Bearings and lubrication are the routine. Conveyor bearings run constant duty, and they fail with noise and heat before they seize, so the inspection is as much listening and feeling as it is looking. Lubrication follows the manufacturer's interval and the right grease for the bearing and the environment, because over-greasing blows seals and under-greasing burns the bearing. The drive chain on a chain or overhead conveyor gets the same attention to wear and lubrication.

Alignment is not set once. Bearings settle, frames shift, and product wear changes things, so the alignment and the tracking get rechecked as part of the program, not just at install. Build the preventive maintenance schedule around the cycle count and the manufacturer's intervals, and do every part of it under lockout, because maintenance is exactly when people reach into the machine.

Worker training and nip awareness

The single largest cause of conveyor injuries is not a design flaw. It is a person reaching into a running machine to clear a jam, and training is what stops it. Workers around a conveyor have to know that you do not clear a jam, free a stuck product, or reach past a guard with the line running, ever, and that the lockout is not optional because it is slower than the quick reach.

Nip awareness is the core of it. People underestimate the nip because it looks slow and the box looks light, and they do not understand that a glove caught at a pulley takes the hand with it faster than they can pull back. The training has to make the nip real, name where every nip lives on their line, and connect it to the rule that hands stay out of the machine unless it is locked out.

Lockout training is specific, not general. The person has to know how to isolate every energy source on their machine, how to release the stored energy in the take-up and block the incline runback, and how to verify zero energy before reaching in. Tie the training to OSHA's requirements, ASME B20.1, and the manufacturer's procedures, and confirm the program against the AHJ.

What to document

The records are what prove the line was installed right and what the next crew needs to service it safely. Capture the layout and the as-built that show where every section, drive, and transfer actually landed, the drive data for each motor and gearbox, the controls and the integration map, the safety devices and where each one covers, and the commissioning results that prove the flow and the safeties. A field tool like FieldOS keeps that record tied to the asset so it is there when the line goes down at 2 a.m.

The table below is the working set. Record it as you go, because reconstructing it after the integrator leaves is the slow, expensive way.

Common mistakes

• Leaving nip points unguarded at pulleys, sprockets, couplings, and transfers where a hand can reach.
• No e-stops, or e-stops and pull-cords mounted out of reach of where a person can be caught.
• No lockout for clearing jams, so the conveyor restarts on the person reaching into it.
• Skipping the stored-energy step, leaving the take-up tension and the incline runback live during service.
• Setting a frame that is out of level and out of square, then fighting the jams and wear it causes.
• Letting the belt mistrack instead of squaring the pulleys and leveling the frame that cause it.
• Running a screw conveyor with the trough cover off, exposing the full-length shear point.
• Clearing a jam with the conveyor running because the lockout looks slower than the quick reach.

Field checklist

Standards and references

Two safety frameworks govern conveyor work, plus the electrical code and the manufacturer. OSHA's machine-guarding requirements cover the duty to guard ingoing nip points and rotating parts, and OSHA's control-of-hazardous-energy requirements cover the lockout and tagout that keep the machine from restarting during service. ASME B20.1, the safety standard for conveyors and related equipment, is the conveyor-specific standard that addresses guarding, emergency stops, the guarded-by-location exception, and the design and installation safety provisions. Cite both for the point each one actually controls.

The electrical side runs to the National Electrical Code and the motor control center, covered in the motor control center commissioning and motor starting methods guides. Conductor sizing, overcurrent protection, disconnecting means, and grounding for the drives follow the adopted electrical code edition. The motor starting method and the VFD soft start follow the motor starting guide.

The manufacturer's documentation is the controlling reference for the specific machine: the guarded points, the alignment tolerances, the load and speed ratings, the take-up settings, the lubrication intervals, and the commissioning procedure. Standards and code editions are adopted and amended by jurisdiction, so hedge the guarding, the e-stop placement, and the lockout program to OSHA, ASME B20.1, the manufacturer, and the AHJ, and verify the adopted editions before you build to them. The three that carry the day: the nip point amputates, so guard it and e-stop it and lock it out; level, square, and align the frame and track the belt; commission the flow and prove the safeties.

Units and terms

Conveyor work runs on a vocabulary that crosses mechanical, electrical, and controls trades, so the same part can read differently between the manufacturer's manual and the integrator's drawings.

The terms below are the ones that decide whether a conversation about a conveyor is precise or vague. Speed is given in feet per minute, throughput in units or cases per hour, and load in pounds per foot or per zone.

Conveyor / material handling

Machinery that moves product through a building, the broad trade covering belt, roller, chain, screw, pneumatic, overhead, and sortation

Nip point

The in-running pinch where a belt meets a pulley, a chain meets a sprocket, or two rollers meet, that draws in and amputates

E-stop / pull-cord

Emergency stop device; a pull-cord runs the length of the conveyor and drops the line when pulled from anywhere along it

Lockout / restart / runback

Isolating energy before service; restart is automatic re-energizing, runback is a loaded incline rolling backward when the drive releases

Belt vs roller vs screw

Belt carries on a moving belt, roller on driven or gravity rollers, screw on an auger flight in a trough

MDR

Motorized driven roller, a roller with a low-voltage motor inside that drives a zone, the basis of zoned accumulation

Zero-pressure accumulation

Zone logic that backs product up without the cases pressing on each other, so a sorter or scanner can meter them

Belt tracking

Keeping the belt centered; the belt moves toward the end of the roller it contacts first, so square and level control it

Take-up tension

The device, screw or gravity counterweight, that holds belt tension as the belt stretches and the load changes

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