Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor section – Endless conveyor
Patent
1994-03-11
1995-06-06
Bidwell, James R.
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor section
Endless conveyor
B65G 2116
Patent
active
054214491
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to angle stations in or for endless conveyor belts, as well as to guide roller units and guide roller support brackets for use therein.
The use of angle stations in conjunction with endless conveyors is not new, with such prior art being described in the patents of Mayor & Coulson Ltd. GB 520,744 "Improvements in or connected with conveyors of the belt type" and Anderson Strathclyde PLC GB 2,156,760 "Angle stations in or for endless conveyor belts". The main function and purpose of an angle station, is to enable an endless conveyor to change its direction of travel laterally e.g. in order to negotiate a bend along its route.
To date the most popular method of performing radial or lateral angular conveyor deviation, was to have an arrangement of two or more separate endless conveyors which were so aligned as to overlap each other at the point of required deviation, thus acting in principle as one single conveyor.
The advantage of using an angle station instead of this overlaid system is that in terms of its constructional and operational features it is a much more efficient method of performing the same function due to the fact that it requires only one conveyor drive. This not only reduces the initial installation, maintenance and repair costs, but also drastically reduces the amount of space required for its siting.
The basic principle behind most angle stations is to allow an endless conveyor belt to move over a helical path of low frictional resistance, invariably provided by some form of guide roller arrangement. Although such angle station constructional arrangements are well known, previous designs have never fully achieved commercial or technical success in such hostile industrial environments as mines, quarries and ore plants. This has been due to various reasons including the use of a multitude of essentially small diameter rollers which suffer from the great disadvantages of lack of inherent strength due to their small size and that they wear out relatively quickly due to their high rotational speeds giving rise to high maintenance costs. They are also prone to seizure due to the ingress and accumulation of debris and particulate foreign matter which can readily become trapped in the confined spaces around such small diameter rollers.degree. Also where rollers are relatively widely separated laterally of each other the belt pathway becomes substantially angular so that the endless belt suffers a large amount of bending and straightening as it traverses the rollers resulting in considerable wear and energy losses.
It is an object of the present invention to avoid or minimise one or more of the above disadvantages.
According to this invention a guide member is so designed and constructed as to provide for rolling contact between it and the conveyor belt it is supporting, with the rolling motion taking place in the direction of conveyor belt travel at the point where contact occurs, and the contact being so configured as to provide support for the belt in a generally convex or cambered manner correspondingly more or less closely with the natural transverse curvature of the belt.
This rolling contact is preferably achieved by means of a plurality of idler rolling members, means for the releasable interchangeable support mounting of said rolling members, support mountings on a surface, usually cylindrical in form, each of these rolling members to be capable of independent rotation to other rolling members about an axis not normal to the direction of movement of the belt (i.e. they do not castor).
In one aspect the present invention provides an angle station for lateral angular displacement of an endless conveyor belt in a conveyor system, which angle station comprises a belt guide means in the form of a plurality of large diameter guide rollers individually mounted in support brackets on a support structure with said rollers substantially clear of said support brakcets and support structure, said guide rollers being generally elongate and arranged substantially normal to
REFERENCES:
patent: 2212006 (1940-08-01), Buchanan
patent: 3016127 (1962-01-01), Cooper
patent: 3184043 (1965-05-01), Gibbon
patent: 4655340 (1987-04-01), Steel
Bidwell James R.
Huwood International Limited
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