Plant Services - May 2008 - (Page 47) Conveying reliability link by link By John L. Wright Use nine commonsense techniques to keep your chain conveyors moving veryone wants to buy a product at the lowest initial price and wants it to last a long time. It’s no different for a plant that uses chain conveyors. Purchasing departments seek the best price. Maintenance groups try to keep those chains running as long as possible. Several chain manufacturers provide standard chains and competition keeps prices low. ose manufacturers provide plenty of good maintenance information for standard chains at little or no cost. So, you can buy standard conveyor chains at low prices. And maintenance organizations can keep them running by following simple and inexpensive guidelines. In many cases, everyone gets what they want. E Rollers and sliders e two standard conveyor chain types have straight-edged link plates, or sidebars. One type has small diameter rollers, or no rollers, and the link plate edges slide on ways or guides. OK, not all conveyor chains roll, but they’re an important part of conveyor chain usage. e chains that slide conform to American National Standards ASME B29.4 (Figure 1a) or B29.12 (Figure 1b). e second type has rollers that are larger in diameter than the height of the link plates or sidebars, and they roll on ways or guides. ese chains conform to American National Standards ASME B29.4 (Figure 1c) or B29.15 (Figure 1d). e pitch ranges from 1.0 in. to 4.0 in. e pitch on ASME B29.12 chains ranges from 2.609 in. to 7.0 in. And the pitch of ASME B29.15 chains is from 3.0 in. to 6.0 in. Minimum tensile strengths range from 3,125 lb. for the C2040 chain in B29.4 to 155,000 lb. for the S864 chain in B29.12. Chain manufacturers offer many nonstandard variants. Many types of attachments are available for these chains (Figure 2). e user can then mount a variety of carriers on the attachments. As a result, these standard conveyor chains serve a large number of material-handling needs. And because they’re standard chains, their cost is usually lower than a special made-to-order chain. M .PLANTSERVICES. 47 http://www.plantservices.com
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