Conveyor Belt

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by cgredalertcc

Also an interesting observation on the bands. The rollers at each end of the conveyor were made out of 3" PVC pipe with a cap on each end and rings of larger PVC glued in place to create ridges and valleys, our intent being for the bands to ride in the valleys, but they did the exact opposite. The bands tracked to the high points and stayed there quite nicely.

This is exactly what flat belts do, and why they can be so problematic if you're not being extremely careful with them. Flat belts will always track to the highest point of a pulley if it's at all possible for them to do so. This means that if your pulleys aren't parallel, the belt will track to the high side of the pulley. Crowning the pulley can help with this, but not if your alignment is bad enough that a "low" side of the crown is still higher than anything else. This is also why losing tension can cause belts to ride side to side or ride up onto flanges. They're all somewhat elastic, so if there's enough stretch in them to start riding up on a flange, they'll happily do so and will soon be attempting to ride on the flange itself.

I'm not saying it's not possible to be successful with them, mind. Just that it requires a certain attention to detail.