Conveyor systems have been around so long that it's easy to think of them as a commodity and assume all systems are alike.

But after decades of use, conveyors are still not an entirely mature technology. The engineers who design today's conveyor and sortation systems are constantly dreaming up new ways to make their company's products more durable, faster, simpler to install and easier to maintain.

Modern spoke to engineers at eight of the country's leading conveyor suppliers and asked them to discuss specific engineering details that enhance their company's technology and make it a stand-out solution for their customers.

Many conveyor systems run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This constant operation puts belts, motors and other system components under considerable stress. But conveyor suppliers know their customers can't tolerate the unexpected downtime required to fix a broken system, so they do all they can to improve product durability.

Hytrol (870-935-3700, www.hytrol.com), for example, recently introduced 24-volt DC roller technology designed specifically with durability in mind.

“The industry is moving more and more toward 24-volt,” says Boyce Bonham, manager of quality assurance for Hytrol, “but the life expectancy hasn't been as good as we'd like in motorized roller.”

Traditional 24-volt conveyor has a DC motor and a set of gearing built inside a conveyor roller. When Hytrol engineers designed the company's new E24 system, they took the 24-volt motors out of the rollers and placed them on the side frame of the conveyor. Bringing the motors outside the rollers, says Bonham, allows for much better heat dissipation, extending motor life.

The unique design of Daifuku's (800-253-1003, www.daifukuamerica.com) chain-driven accumulation conveyor also results in a longer lasting system. This package conveyor is designed like heavy-duty pallet conveyor—with a sprocket connecting each roller to a drive chain.

The standard way to drive a package accumulator, says Daifuku's engineering manager Randy Fox, is to place a flat belt under the rollers. But Daifuku's design is more durable, he says, because a drive chain lasts longer than a drive belt.

Accumulating with a chain is possible because Daifuku uses a patented “indirect drive” system. In this system, a sprocket doesn't directly connect a roller to the drive chain. Instead, an indirect drive unit sits between the roller and the chain, and the roller only moves when the pneumatically controlled drive unit engages it.

This design allows each roller to be controlled independently, making the system flexible as well as durable. “When you push a belt up against rollers, you use standard components, so you have standard sized zones,” says Fox. “With this design, you can control the zone size.”

Distribution center managers are always looking for ways to get more products through their facilities in less time.

Schaefer Systems International (704-944-4500, www.ssi-schaefer.us) tries to achieve that goal by making more intelligent conveyor, says Ross Halket, Schaefer's director of automated systems.

Most North American manufacturers use PLCs (programmable logic controllers) to control their conveyors. Halket says Schaefer's FT+ conveyor line is controlled by industrial PCs, which are more common in Europe and have more memory and processing power than typical PLCs.

When a decision needs to be made at a transfer point, says Halket, a PC-based control doesn't have to ask the host what to do. In a PLC-based system, he says, “you could have 4,000 scanners all asking the host questions at the same time.” But in Schaefer's FT+ system, those 4,000 scanners take care of themselves, allowing for faster decision-making and higher throughput.

Speeding up the system isn't the only way to get higher throughput. The S-L300 sliding shoe sorter by Dematic (877-725-7500, www.dematic.us) achieves throughput rates of more than 300 cartons per minute without running at breakneck speeds that can wear out equipment prematurely.

Gregg Vandenbosch, manager of product management, says the key to high throughput is not to move cartons faster, but to minimize the gaps between them.

A traditional shoe sorter diverts a carton at an angle. “The shoes rotate the carton, which effectively makes it longer,” he says. The gaps between cartons then have to be large enough to accommodate the rotation.

The S-L300 uses a unique “parallel divert” system that doesn't rotate cartons at all, allowing for very narrow gapping and, therefore, higher throughput.

The Intellisort shoe sorter from Intelligrated (513-701-7300, www.intelligrated.com) also achieves rates of 300 cartons per minute by reducing gapping. Intelligrated's approach, says Justin Zimmer, lead engineer for sortation products, is to turn cartons gradually.

A typical shoe sorter, says Zimmer, turns a carton from 0 to 20 degrees almost instantaneously. “We spread the physics of those forces over a longer period of time,” he says. The gradual turn lets a carton move away from its surrounding cartons before reaching its full 20-degree angle, allowing for gaps as small as 2 inches between cartons.

Turning cartons more gradually also makes them easier to control, says Zimmer, so they're less prone to spin and topple as they're diverted.

In addition to improving the operation of their systems, conveyor suppliers also look for ways to improve installation.

“Part of our job is to anticipate problems before they happen,” says Greg Hilycord, vice president of system sales at HK Systems (800-457-9783, www.hksystems.com). And a common problem when installing a new conveying and sortation system is that columns, sprinkler systems and other obstacles in a building are not always where the drawings said they'd be.

The flexible design of HK Systems' Whispersort sliding shoe sorter makes it easy to accommodate these “gotchas” in the field, Hilycord says.

The sorter's electric divert switches—the mechanisms in charge of diverting cartons at the right spur—aren't welded in place as in a traditional sorter, he says. Instead, they're “virtual switches” that can be easily moved, giving installers the flexibility to quickly deal with inaccuracies in drawings.

“It's a subtle thing,” Hilycord says, “but it's also critical in that projects have a momentum, and you have to maintain that momentum to get installations done on time and within budget.”

Another way to smooth the installation process is to make it as predictable as possible by avoiding custom engineering and programming.

In a highly automated facility, the job of conveyor is often to receive goods from one piece of automated equipment and deliver them to another. Creating smooth transitions at these interface points is critical and can prove challenging to inexperienced installation teams trying to engineer those interfaces on the fly, says Tim Kraus, conveyor products manager for FKI Logistex (877-935-4564, www.fkilogistex.com).

Over the years, says Kraus, the engineers at FKI have developed a range of algorithms for delivering products to different processes in different ways. The library of algorithms, he says, helps FKI avoid custom engineering. “We've built those building blocks, so we're solving problems the same way every time,” he says, “so it's repeatable and easy to troubleshoot.”

FKI has almost completed the next addition to the library: a control system that connects pneumatically actuated accumulation conveyor and motorized roller conveyor. “It will be seamless,” Kraus says. “No extra devices or programming.”

As conveyor systems get more sophisticated, they often get more difficult to maintain. One way to ease the burden on maintenance personnel is to coax high performance out of simple technologies.

For example, TGW Ermanco's (231-798-4547, www.tgw-ermanco.com) WAVE diverter is an enhanced version of a standard wheel diverter, a sortation technology that typically handles about 100 cartons per minute.

“We took that old technology, and by rearranging it and enhancing it, were able to get 200 cartons per minute,” says Dale Deur, TGW's product engineering manager. Achieving such rates would usually require a more expensive and complex sliding shoe sorter, he says, “but now a familiar technology can do things that only a very complex technology could do before.”

TGW's CRUZbelt conveyor is another example of an old technology made new. The CRUZbelt is like conventional belt conveyor, says Deur, but its streamlined design reduces cost, installation time and the need to tension belts and perform other maintenance.