In the pursuit of improving the quality of their product, whilst also minimising wear on their systems, our client has installed our STARCLEAN Scrapers with the automatic engaging system. It is tied into the conveyor’s PLC system making them fully automatic.
As simple as our STARCLEAN scrapers are to install, service and adjust with industry-leading performance, the automatic systems take them to another level!
The problem is that when your final product is some of the highest quality solar marine salt in the world, you want to keep the contaminants to a minimum thus enabling you to ship a higher quality end product. Furthermore minimising water use also helps greatly.
Running belt conveyors empty or dry for extended periods of time causes the black powder to come off on components in touch with the belt such as skirts, belt scrapers etc. This powder goes into the product stream. Well-designed maintained and adjusted scrapers minimise this wear but you will always get this powder to some extent. It is simply due to the friction between the belt and scraper when running dry.
When you have product running over the scrapers; moisture and the material act as a lubricant negating this effect. So why run belts empty? It is impractical to shut down conveyors in between loads or short breaks in production and it is not uncommon to have conveyors run empty for extended periods running into hours.
So why not disengage scrapers when the belts are empty? Firstly, as most scrapers are mechanical systems they would require an operator with tools to go to each scraper and manually disengage them. Also, for most types, as the adjustment process is not so simple, setting them up again correctly is difficult. Whilst the standard STARCLEAN systems are the most simple to disengage and engage conveniently taking only seconds, it still would require an operator to manually do this.
To deal with this STARCLEAN have a simple motorised system that adapts to their standard system enabling the scrapers to be electronically controlled. The photo below shows the simple addition of the motorised arms that can quickly engage and disengage the scrapers. They are connected to the Conveyors PLC so they can be programmed to cycle on and off as you need depending on your requirements.
Below are a couple of videos showing the primary and secondary units operating during commissioning. Local control and manual adjustment can still be performed should you wish to disengage, inspect or clean the scrapers.
