Food conveyors have completely revolutionized the processed food manufacturing industry. They have not only made the manufacturing process much faster but also very safe and effective. If you have set up any kind of processed food manufacturing plant, you must follow a few key precautionary steps for the food conveyor systems to ensure that your plant keeps on manufacturing at a rapid pace.
Keeping Food Conveyor systems clean
The most important maintenance step including one which should always be done on an ongoing basis is clearing of debris from the belt. Food materials, by their very nature, tend to disintegrate very easily. As a result, you will find that very often the food conveyor will have a lot of debris all around. These need to be cleaned diligently, regularly and carefully. Failure to clean the conveyor will lead to problems like blockages which can lead to uneven flow of the system inducing shaking, which further leads to more problems. In fact, you should train all operators to ensure that debris are regularly cleaned from the belt.
Spillage is another problem which can cause a lot of damage to your food conveyor systems as well as other machines installed on the spot. Spillage occurs when the food items fall off or for some reason, go flying off, from the conveyor system and get all over the place. One common location where spillage occurs is at junction points where multiple conveyor systems meet each other. If the transition between the two is not at level, spillage is bound to occur. Over time this can create a lot of problems so you must take every step to prevent spillage.
Keeping Food Conveyor systems well aligned
Next you must be careful about belt slippage. The belt is the most important part of the conveyor system as it is used to move the items around the area where the system is deployed. Belt slippage is one problem which must be constantly monitored against since any slippage of the belt will not only mean that the product on the belt will get wasted but it will also create a lot of problems for the entire food conveyor assembly including its rails gears and even control systems. The loss arising out of this can go into millions of dollars and you should take every step to ensure that such a situation does not arise.
Roller seizure is another common problem with the food conveyor systems that can arise if proper maintenance is not done on the machines on a regular basis. Basically, in this situation, one or more rollers gets stuck in the mechanism which leads to certain parts of the system getting stuck or in the worst case scenario, the entire system jamming. Common causes behind this can be debris getting stuck in the mechanism or misalignment of rollers or belts or not doing proper lubrication in the moving parts.
Tracking challenges can be another key problem with food conveyor systems. Ideally the entire food conveyor system should run in a straight line to the maximum possible length. However, this might not be the case every time. So wherever turns or joints are given, they should be at the level. The problem is that with the usage and uneven weight distribution, the tracks of the conveyor system will get misaligned and this will cause uneven wear which needs to be prevented. A strict schedule to undertake maintenance of the food conveyor system must be established and operators must be trained to observe and report any problems.
Like any other machine, food conveyor systems need to be properly serviced and maintained on a regular basis. In absence of a regular maintenance schedule, the machine will not be able to keep up with regular workload and will end up broken.
