Self Tracking Belt

• Self-Tracking; the belt does not need any tracking or steering device as this is built into the design of the belt itself
• No stretching; the longitudinal wires are made from pretensioned cables, therefore the stretching of the belt is reduced even under high tensioning
• No wear; the more sensitive cable wires do not touch the rollers, they are safely located in the V-shaped sections of the solid cross wires.
• High Flexibility; the flexibility of the cable in the running direction considerably improves the resistance to metal fatigue, even at high speed on small diameter pulleys

Self Tracking Belt Mesh Construction

A – Warp Cable             B – Warp Gap                  C – Weft Wire                  D – Weft Gap

Self-Tracking belt is constructed with weft (cross) wire strands, having ‘V’ forms on the underside of the belt.  These forms secure the warp cables (running longitudinally) in place and engage with grooves, in the end rollers, to give the belt its self-tracking characteristic. For Conveyor Design Guidelines click here

Self-Tracking belt (STB) is available in widths up to 3,000mm; open areas from 0% to nearly 70% are possible.  With a flat surface and minimal opening between wires possible, it is particularly suitable for small and delicate products.

Available Specifications

Standard Material Available

Self-Tracking Belt is supplied in 316SS (1.4401) stainless steel as standard, but other grades are available on request.

Joining Methods

Pin-Joint

This is the preferred joining system. The leading and trailing ends of the belt feature pre-formed loops, through which a pin is inserted. The belt can then be easily and quickly joined and disassembled on the machine

Endless Seam

The belt is supplied endless, with the warp cables interwoven to create a seam. This system is used when uniform openings are required down the length of the belt. This joining method requires that the belt be fitted on the machine from the side and therefore a special machine design is required.

Edges

Weft wires are plasma welded together in groups of 2 or 3 wires. This prevents shifting of the weft wires and damaging of the edges.

Self Tracking Belt Speciality Features

Bent up Edges

This type of belt is suitable for bulk product, which is loose to move across the belt.  Without the braid wire strands in the vertical section the bent-up mesh the edges gently fan out to create a guide wall to prevent product loss.  The bent up edges can be supplied up to 40mm in height.

Agricultural Waste Drying Application

Summary

The customer was a designing a modular system for drying agricultural waste product such as woodchip and wood shavings, so that these can go on to form the basis of value-added products.

Issue to be resolved

A conveyor belt was required to dry agricultural product such as woodchip and wood shavings in industrial quantities. This dryer was a prototype of a modular dryer design to be launched by the customer later in the year. To fit the application and need for modularity, the conveyor belt was required in widths ranging from 1500 to 3000 mm, to have a high strength to wait ratio and to be highly customisable in terms of gap/aperture size.

Action taken

Wire Belt recommended the use of Self-Tracking Belt for this application, due to its exceptional strength to weight ratio and wide variety of mesh configurations. This belt particularly suited the future modular requirements due to all available mesh configurations being compatible with the same grooved pulley design.

Results

Working with the customer and their design engineers, the Wire Belt Technical Sales team supported the customer by helping with mesh selection, material selection, belt load calculations, pulley design and maximum product throughput.

Polymer Extrusion Application

Summary

The customer is a manufacturer of high temperature engineering polymers, for us in a range of different industries. The manufacturing process involves extruding tubes of ‘spaghetti strings’ of polymer onto a conveyor belt for cooling, before passing on to further processes later on in the line.

Issue to be resolved

During the manufacturing process solid tubes of polymer are extruded onto the belt quite closely together to allow for a maximisation of allowable space. Due to the spacing of the tubes and the fact that they are hot from the extrusion processes, it was common for adjacent lines to become stuck together and fuse as they cooled. This in turn lead to rejections in the QA process as the fused products could not be sold on to customers.

Action taken

The Wire Belt Technical Sales team consulted with the customer to determine what avenues for resolution they could accept within their highly controlled manufacturing processes, and determined that the best solution would be to mechanically separate the extruded tubes, as increasing the gap would not be possible without decreasing product throughput. After trials, Self Tracking Belt was selected due to its range of customisation and the ability to mechanically fasten a flight to the belt. A flight machined from solid 316 Stainless Steel was selected due to its inert nature, and the ability to make a low-profile module that would not interfere with other processes in manufacturing.

Results

The customer now uses two different types of flighted Self Tracking Belt during the extrusion processes to ensure that no strands fuse together, and therefore increase their production output/reduce their losses through the QA process.