Belt Maintenance Is Your Friend!

When you buy a car, the dealership will let you know that you should come in for a check-up after a certain number of miles. While they totally believe in the quality of their product, they also know from experience that things need to be checked now and again to avoid major problems from forming.  The same goes for your conveyor belt. Nothing is worse than having a belt break in the middle of an important order. The lost time, money, and production will drive anyone to frustration (if not out of business). Though there is no magic bullet that lets you avoid mishaps completely, there is one way to limit them. At Furnace Belt, we believe that if you are consistent in performing belt maintenance through regular inspections and audits, your belts will last longer and run smoother. With that in mind, we put together the top five things to consider when doing belt maintenance:

1. Make sure your belt was made for your exact specifications. Don’t overshoot and try to get something too heavy for your needs. Belts have specific loading capacities and they must be respected.

2. Choose the proper alloy for the temperatures or application. For example, if you’re running at 2,000 degrees, you would use 314 stainless steel in building your belt; as opposed to using more standard galvanized steel. You can always ask one of our experts for help in finding the perfect belt for the appropriate temperature.

3. Keep up on the maintenance of the furnace itself. If your furnace is not running at the correct temperature, it will not only affect belt life, but your product quality as well.

4. Flip the belt from time to time. Give one side a rest in favor of the other. It’s a process that’s a little like rotating your crops in a field to insure overall health

5. Make sure that everything’s running true and straight.  Otherwise, your belt might be torn and if you process food that could mean disaster.

If you follow these steps, we believe you can not only maintain the life of your belt, but also ensure the safety of your workers and save money all at the same time.

Food Processing Meshes Are Some of Our Absolute Specialties

Few industries in this world are as continuously non-stop as food processing. Commanding literally trillions of dollars in global sales and profits, and with an ever-increasing number of people across the planet developing hearty appetites for processed foods, we frankly see no end in sight as far as the need for food processing and packaging companies to expand their productive capacity. As with any industry that performs ceaseless high-volume runs, the food processing industry – whether it’s food or drink, meat or starch – requires trackless miles of conveyor belts to keep up with the growing demand.

At Furnace Belt, we offer many different meshes and possible materials for food processing conveyor belts. Whether you are in the abattoir industry and need extra yardage for your meat or poultry products, or whether you’re in the beverage business and need extra meshing to handle a new line of juice, beer, or soft drink, at Furnace Belt, we offer the right fit for a reasonable price. For more information about how we can help your business expand its production capacity and for which type of mesh would best suit the needs of your line of work, please browse our website, or contact us at 1-800-354-7213.

Our Cold-Resistant Meshes: the Perfect Match for the Flash Freeze Industry

Essentially, flash freezing is a technique that’s used in a variety of packaged foods – anything from fresh meat, to fresh fruit, to frozen dinners. The process involved is easily explained: by freezing packaged foods at temperatures well below zero, and by doing so quickly, one can virtually eliminate any trace of ice crystals or bits of frost that might otherwise interfere with the flavor (and even sanitation) of the food being frozen. The reason that there’s no frost involved is due to the speed at which a flash frozen package gets chilled: the process is so rapid that any residue water never has a chance to congeal within the package. In a global market where people in either hemisphere want instant access to the same seasonal produce year-round, the benefits of the technique are self-evident in the huge profits tallied each year by the industry.

Since flash freezing requires mass production (and  thereby recommends itself to conveyor belts), there’s a need to be sure that the type of conveyor belt mesh you use can withstand the extreme cold temperatures involved in the process. That’s where our Furnace Belt meshes come into play. While our 304 stainless steel and carbon steel meshes are best known for standing up to intense heat, the same goes for their operability in harsh, sub-zero conditions. Our meshes won’t tarnish, fray, or break under the conditions to which they’re exposed to: they’ll just keep on keeping on, making sure that the flash freezing process is seamless, and production flow remains at a constant.

Powdered Metals: a Time-Honored Industry with a Long Future Ahead

The time-honored technique of powder metallurgy has been around in one form or another since as far back as 3000 B.C. in ancient Egypt, and has been widely in service since the late 19^th century when mass producing low-cost, high-endurance parts, pieces, and components. You’ll find powdered metal used in any number of applications and industries: automotive, defense, medical, and maritime, to name a few. By intensively heating a powdered metal – or a corresponding powdered alloy – up to its near melting point, you can do away with many needless complexities as far as assembly and sub-assembly; you can shape the metal to the dimensions roughly desired in the final, finished part. Beyond this acknowledged flexibility, the powdering process leaves a good finish upon cooling, is well-proven to be cost effective in comparison with other types of metallurgy, and is ideal for high-volume production runs.

Since conveyor belt technology is equally suited for high-volume production runs, it only stands to reason that our Furnace Belt meshes are used commonly by the powdered metal industry. With a variety of flat, tightly-woven conveyor meshes with high, built-in heat-resistance, our conveyor belts are ideal for mass producing powdered metal parts as needed. With cost-cutting an ever-growing concern in the fabrication of metal parts, we can only anticipate that this longstanding metallurgical process has a long and profitable future ahead of itself. We know that our signature 304 stainless steel, high carbon steel, and low carbon galvanized steel meshes will leave other conveyor belts behind in their tracks.

Aluminum Recycling with Gratex

Aluminum production is an involved, labor-intensive process, primarily due to the fact that aluminum itself is never to be found “on its own,” but rather as part of a compound of various other elements, the most frequent of them being oxygen and silicon (“bauxite”). In order to refine aluminum into a usable state, one must first mix it with sodium hydroxide to eliminate all extraneous impurities. Then, one must mix the aluminum extract with cryolite (sodium fluoride and aluminum fluoride) and heat the admixture to a temperature of almost 1000 degrees Celsius. Being that aluminum is a critical mainstay of modern industry, one that has applications ranging from shipbuilding to Budweiser cans, and being that it isn’t a metal that (unlike, say, iron) is subject to corrosion, it is small wonder that such a vast industry has sprouted around the recycling and reprocessing of old aluminum for new operations.

Recycling aluminum is a very effective means both of reducing industrial waste and cutting labor costs, since it is much less painstaking process than actual bauxite extraction. That being said, the process doesn’t come without its price-tag. One must still have the means of heating old beer cans (and the like) to such a degree that they can return to a pure liquid state. Furthermore, one must have a streamlined means of conveyance of these recyclables, since in order to reconstitute significant amounts of aluminum for new usage; one must recycle a huge number of cans, plate metal, bars, etc.

This is where Furnace Belt’s Gratex conveyor belts come into play. Since our Gratex belts are built to sustain high heat exposure while still carrying minute, individual components, they are an ideal choice for aluminum recycling. In fact, we have several customers throughout the States who can attest to the quality of our Gratex conveyor belts in aiding them with their recycling operations.

Rod Reinforcement Weave: for When the Conveyance Gets Tough

One of our customers at Furnace Belt runs a business that – in part – involves the manufacturing of air brakes for semi-trucks. Beyond that critical component of what they do, they also are in the business of shredding old rubber tires, recycling the heated, re-treated rubber for any number of uses. Needless to say, the business of shredding tires and melting them down into other applications is a terrifically heat-intensive process. In order for such a process to be conducted in an orderly, automated fashion, conveyor belt mesh is needed that will be extremely resistant to searing levels of temperature, as well as providing a durable, tensile means of holding down the parts as they become recycled.

To that end, rod reinforcement mesh weaves allow for companies like our own client to incorporate industrial-strength heat resistance into the material that forms their conveyor lines. Designed by using single directional spirals (much like those in a chain-link fence, though usually more tightly interwoven), each “line” of mesh is then reinforced by a single rod that runs through its entire width. This rod gives the mesh an ability to bear considerable loads, in addition to insuring that the mesh material doesn’t expand beyond usefulness during the extreme heating process. Perfect for any number of high temperature industrial applications, the rod-reinforced weaves we make at Furnace Belt continue to supply American manufacturing with a sturdy, efficient means to an end.

Compound Balanced Weaves: Ideal for Smaller Components

In the case of an industrial process like the metal working of small components, a lot of hard work and man-hours can go to waste if the right conveyor belt isn’t used. Think of the size of many of the nuts, bolts, and screws that go into assembling whatever application you ultimately intend. Think of the dimensions that each of these applications takes up – oftentimes close to nothing, right? To insure this problem of “component leakage” never occurs, we fortunately have the compound balanced weave.

Named so on account of its compactness, these particular types of balanced weaves consist of a seamless, ”compounded” series of left-hand and right-hand spirals. Generally fabricated from much the same materials as are common balanced weaves, these meshes have an interlocked firmness to them that is a distant cousin of medieval chain mail. The sheer accumulation of mesh-links allows for the mesh belt to sustain considerably heavier loads than can the lighter, more interspersed “common” balanced weave. At Furnace Belt, our own compound balanced weaves can be built to endure a hefty 8.14 lb/ft², making them ideal for bearing small metal components of considerable mass.