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Portable Welder

Cast Iron
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Location
Milan, MI
I'm building a new 17' long section of a aggregate conveyor that has 2 troughing roller and one head pulley.

My question is, should the head pulley be on the same plane as the flat roller that is part of the troughing rollers.

or maybe another way to say the same thing... if I were to run a string across the top several of the center rollers, when the string comes across the head pulley they would all be on the same plane.

I've built several slider bed belt conveyors over the years and usually keep the head and tail pulleys about a 1/16" higher than the bed itself.

However, on troughing rollers you have the low center roller and the 2 angled rollers.... so I'm not sure if it would be common to have the head or tail pulley a little higher than the low center roller's
 
I can't answer your question exactly, but all the conveyors I've built I have kept the head drum at least an 1/8" high of the pan..same as you note. I cannot see where this would be necessary on a troughing conveyor as there is no pan to interfere with the belt. This probably didn't help you at all!:o

Stuart
 
I build a lot of food processing conveyors so take my advice as that.

When I build conveyors that have free standing packages in them, I keep everything flat, but when it comes to rubber type transfer conveyors such as sliced apples or chopped lettuce, I like to keep the main roller a little taller to help with grip.

With a slightly raised drive wheel, any weight on the belt helps it retain as much traction as possible.

Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk
 
Keeping them all on the same plane (head/tail pulley and bottom of the trough rollers for a 17' belt) should be fine. All aggregate stackers we had at coal processing plants were all on the same plane. When people try to keep stuff on the belts and move the trough rollers too close to the head/tail rollers is where the trouble starts. Putting a bend in the belt too close puts a great amount of force on the rollers forming a trough. Two trough rollers in 17' doesn't sound right. Maybe OK for small amount of material with a loading trough on the tailstock end. A very thin belt with a lot of tension maybe OK as well.
 
The troughing rollers should be about a 1/8 inch higher than the plane created by the head and tail pulley, your conveyor also should have lead in and lead out rollers, these have about 1/2 the angle of the main troughers, if you dont you may have belt tracking problems and also make sure your tail pulley has a slight barrel shape if you intend to make your own.
 
Yes the horizontal roller of the troughers need at be at the same level or a touch higher than the head pulley to tail pulley plane. You also need to use at least one 20 degree trougher after tail pulley and before head pulley. The horizontal roller of the trougher does all the steering of the belt. If the belt picks up off this roller when the belt becomes unloaded it wanders around and is a nightmare to track.

On a standard duty aggregate conveyor the troughers are no more than 4feet apart.
 
Mike Hill, no, I wont be making my own roller, you are correct about the importance of what you refer to as a barrel roller, we refer to them as crowned pulleys.

Okay, so I have 3 different answers, FLAT, AN 1/8" HIGHER AND A 1/8" LOWER.

We will be reusing at least one of the troughing rollers, this conveyor is for a concrete plant, so I would consider it to be heavy use.
 
As me and Ringleboy say, 1/8 or so high so they remain in constant contact, especially with such a short conveyer with a longer conveyer the conveyor frame will arch making the rollers stay in contact that way, you may want to stagger the heights on yours you will have to experiment but you want all the rollers turning while its loaded or unloaded.
 








 
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