A busy plastics recycling company was processing ~3000 tons per month of their lightweight raw material using a large number of conveyor belts, many of which would frequently mistrack and this would then cause other problems around the plant.
Conveyor number 5, for example, is around 8m long and had been having 1-2 belt replacements per year for a number of years at a cost of around £1500 per belt. The edge of the belt would get damaged as it mistracked into the structure.
Another problem was that some of the belts were mistracked at the loading points and this meant that material would fall straight onto the floor during loading. Cleaning under the various belts was taking around 1 hour per day.
The final issue was that site personnel were constantly attempting to adjust the positions of the tail drums and idlers to try and correct for the mistracking. This had only limited success and required site staff to regularly enter guarded areas.
ProSpare service engineers fitted Centrax belt trackers onto more than 10 belts for the client over a 12 month period, some of which were single direction belts, some of which were reversible belts and some of which were chevron belts.
The client reported that each belt previously needed some form of manual intervention related to the tracking at least once per week but that this has stopped completely on every belt where a Centrax has been fitted, saving the plant operators time.
They have also reported a 50% reduction in material spillage and associated costs, as the Centrax trackers were deliberately installed several meters before the tail drums to allow the belts to feed squarely into the loading points and catch the raw material.
As for Conveyor 5, it has now had a Centrax belt tracker for more than 1 year and the belt has not needed to be changed during that period, where before it would have required at least one but possibly two replacement belts at around £1500 per belt.
in manual tracking of belts
in material spillage on site
