In the conveyor world, some products are simply more difficult to convey than others. One such product is paper, or in this instance, stacks of paper. When we come across items that are difficult to handle, this often leads us to designing and manufacturing custom equipment to get the job done. However, for a recent customer, we were able to modify one of our standard models, the high rate transfer conveyor, to solve the issue.

We’ve written before about the complexities of handling loose leaf paper, and our ability to provide a good solution to a unique challenge rather than accepting an “okay” solution and living with the consequences. This paper handling customer came back to us with another challenge – what is the best way to transfer these stacks of paper? In the past, we’ve used pneumatic transfer carts outfitted with zones of our proven DC-powered slider bed conveyor in order to transfer paper. The cart would accept product, transfer it out of the first line, and deliver to a second.

We’ve also used belted curves to change direction but maintain orientation of a product, but we had never transferred paper with a “right angle” transfer. In this case, the customer had a machine that required the stacks to come in wide-side leading instead of narrow-side leading, and so a right-angle transfer was needed or a more complicated solution would be required to re-orient the product after the transfer.

We did some testing and found out that, with a few modifications, we could make our existing high speed high rate transfer work with these stacks of paper. We lowered the speed of the infeed and discharge, decreased the acceleration and deceleration of the pop-up, and added a few more narrow belts for stability.

After putting some test product through its paces on our test loop, we were pleasantly surprised that the product handled the stacks of paper consistently and gently enough to avoid disrupting the stack. By using an existing product in a new way, we were able to leverage our standard product designs to provide the customer with a cost-effective paper handling solution in a timely manner.

Looking for more unique paper projects? Check out our robotic document inserter. You can also contact us with questions or to discuss your own challenging project.  

Author: Tom Hazelrigg