The Material Handling Blog

Conveyors can be complicated to understand until you break them down into their individual components and understand what they do for your system. A good place to start when understanding your conveyor system is AC (alternating current) powered conveyor versus DC (direct current) powered conveyor.

The material handling industry is wrought with products that are simply a bear to move. For some products there are plenty of “okay” options, but an optimal one is seemingly nonexistent. So do you just call it quits, close the doors, and never sell another of your difficult to convey products? Of course not.

Even as new material handling technologies enter the market, conveyors seem to remain a critical part of almost every automation system. Here's a brief overview of conveyors and their uses as well as some considerations for choosing the right one to ensure your system performs at peak performance.

For the last several years, a green movement has swept the globe. Consumers, organizations, and large corporations have all moved toward green initiatives. However, in an industry filled with automation and machinery, the thought of going green might seem like a faraway dream. Luckily, new innovations in conveyor technologies have led to the possibility of greener business practices in the fields of materials handling and automation...

As a material handling system integrator, one of the most popular requests we receive from our clients is to design a conveyor system for their operations. When this happens, one of the first things we do is ask about the product this new system will convey. Surprisingly, many customers don't understand why we need this information, but the product specifications are the foundation to building a great conveyor system, and here's why...

There are basic rules of the road for designing a conveyor system. Here are a few.

In a down economy, businesses start to maintain their conveyors instead of replacing them. As the economy starts to squeeze the wallet, new conveyor sales start to fall but spare parts sales, according to Bob Trebilcock from Modern Material Handling magazine, could potentially increase 25% this year...