Cannonball!

I love summer. A couple of years ago, I moved into a house that had a new pool installed. Nothing brings me more joy than to have friends and family over on a hot summer weekend for fun in the pool. I have always been a pool guy. I had one as a kid and my brother had one in his previous home. My brother has three boys and I have two, and we have watched our sons grow up around a handful of family pools.

Conveyor Belt Damage

Impingement damage on a conveyor belt is very common. It is more common with abrasive material. It's basically damage/wear & tear on the surface of the belt from this abrasive material. The constant rotation of material on the belt's surface wears the cover prematurely. This causes the belt to fail prematurely, increasing costs to the operation. It also makes the belt more difficult to clean, causing carryback to build up on the return path of the belt. It’s a lot easier to understand impingement damage than it is to prevent it.

Every time I think of belt damage - in particular how to resolve impingement damage - I think of my sons and my nephews at the pool when they were little. 

Many parents can relate to the sound of their kid(s) screaming “watch me, watch me” as they attempt some act of bravery like jumping off of a diving board. The boys often held cannonball contests when they were younger. After 15-20 minutes of this, we would make them stop because they would splash all of the water out of the pool (and because we were tired of watching them). They would then turn their attention to the slide, zipping down it over and over and over again. I remember one day watching them continuously do cannonballs and go down the slide. The water was roaring from the cannonballs but eventually subsided when the slide was in use. This made me wonder, how is it that the same kids jumping/cannonballing in the pool from the diving board create such disruption to the water yet the same kids while using the slide do not cause such water disruption?

I realized it was because of the “grazing” angle to which they approached the water surface from the slide compared to the direct angle they approached the water from the diving board.

To me, this was a great way to explain how to “prevent” impingement damage. If the material being conveyed can approach its receiving belt with less disruption, impingement damage is minimized. Just like a pool slide changes the trajectory of my kids as they approach the water, there could be mechanical devices that change the trajectory of material as it approaches a belt. Rock boxes, soft loading devices, and even advanced hood and spoon technologies should provide some relief of impingement damage.

So, in closing, if you notice impingement damage on your belts, you may want to consider some sort of effort to change the direction of the material to match the direction of the belt having damage. It may be advantageous to your operation to address material direction before it settles on a belt and eventually causes damage.

Rock boxes shift the abrasion of material off of the belt