Minimizing downtime

1 Bolt ‘N’ Go before assembly • Bolt ‘N’ Go vor der Montage

2 The material is fed into the conveyor from the top and falls through the moving chain to the bottom of the box • Das Material wird dem Förderer von oben aufgegeben und fällt durch die sich bewegende Kette auf den Boden des Kastens

W ith 125 years experience, the engineers at 4B have
come up with a solution that minimises conveyor maintenance downtimes and overcomes a lot of the problems encountered when using drag chain conveyors. 4B’s Bolt ‘N’ Go system is a new flight assembly system that gets rid of the need for welded flights and pins and circlips assemblies which are quite costly and time consuming in terms of manufacturing. This new system includes the following components:

• A set of nylon flights that can be cut to accurate lengths depending on the desired overall width. These nylon flights are very strong and wear resistant but remain light- weight, therefore reducing the amount of power required to drive the chain.

• A hollow pin made of alloy steel (the same material as the link) and case hardened to C57-C62. This pin will take the load in the assembly. It is very strong and can be supplied in stainless steel for applications in a corrosive environment.

• Bolts, nuts and washers are used to hold the flights onto the link and assemble the links together. Lock nuts are used to secure the whole system.

• The system uses 4B drop forged chain links that have special lugs on the sides onto which the flights are fastened, giving the assembly extra stability.

The Bolt ‘N’ Go system is easy to install (Fig. 1), very robust and has a long lifespan. It is no longer required to take the tension out of the chain and take the chain out of the conveyor before changing the flights; the old flights can be taken out and new ones fitted while the chain is still tensioned inside the conveyor. Since a shorter amount of time is required to assemble the nylon flights rather than welding steel flights onto links, all the flights can be delivered very quickly thus eliminating the need to stock a lot of spare parts.

The Bolt ‘N’ Go assembly system is an excellent and robust solution that will not only improve the overall capacity of the conveyor (Fig. 2) to perform at its optimal ability for longer. But also help to minimise the offline maintenance periods thus improving the yearly capacity and profits made using the chain conveyor. Bolt ‘N’ Go is currently available for 4B102NA, 4B142NA and 4B142HA links with flights up to 750 mm wide.

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