Recognizing the Importance of Conveyor-Belt Safety

If you’ve ever seen the “I Love Lucy” famous candy factory scene, you know how fast-paced conveyor belts can move. Although it’s funny to watch Lucy and Ethel frantically shove chocolate in their faces to avoid getting fired, those aren’t practices most food processing companies would find acceptable. June is National Safety Month, so we are highlighting the importance of conveyor belt safety.

Ensuring safety for our employees and customers begins before work begins. All conveyor parts are assembled, stabilized, and tested. Safety features such as rails and netting are put in place to protect workers from objects that might accidentally fall off the belt.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration lays out the safety and health regulations for using conveyors, and here are a few key points:

• Systems must have a stopping mechanism at the operator’s station
• A warning signal must sound immediately before starting up the machine
• Emergency stop switches should not allow the conveyor to start again until the stop has been reset to an “on” position
• Each crossover, aisle, or passageway must be marked with a sign
• If machine isn’t suitable for use, a clear “Do Not Operate” tag must be visible

Furnace Belt makes safety a priority, and we encourage you to check out the video below to learn about the National Safety Council’s Journey to Safety Excellence:

Image courtesy of I Love Lucy's Facebook page

Mining Landfills Can Help Save the Environment

There seems to be endless benefits of recycling. The programs save money, energy, and trees. It generates 1.1 million in U.S. jobs, $236 billion sales annually, and $37 billion in salaries. The process reduces air and water pollutants and conserves natural resources. Most importantly, it keeps products out of landfills—but what will happen to the products already in landfills? That’s where landfill mining and reclamation comes in.

Landfill mining and reclamation is a process consisting of excavating and processing solid wastes that are currently in a landfill—in hopes of retrieving space, soil, and recyclable materials. The process, which dates back to the mid-1900s, aides in reorganizing landfills that are poorly operated or are not up to health codes.

Most landfills established prior to 1994 were closed off to seal the waste. In addition, many landfills were developed without linings to separate the landfill and original environment, meaning the waste can seep into the surrounding groundwater, harming land and unleashing legal liabilities.

Mining and reclamation begins by dividing the landfill content and excavating it onto different screens on a conveyor belt—large wastes are caught in the screen while soil falls through the small screen openings. Here is an example of a landfill mining process:

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This relatively new mining process helps bring the area to an environmental equilibrium, reduce the overall landfill’s size, and recover recyclables. Good candidates for landfill mining and reclamation processes are those where excavators can get an idea of how the landfill was created, the uses of potentially recovered materials, and the current condition of the waste.

A Brief History of Conveyor Belts and the World They Ushered in

Conveyor belts have a long history as an integral part of
production from the coal to the automotive industry.

No history of the last century, or of the current one, would be complete without a history of the industrial conveyor belt. While conveyor belts have been in service since at least the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in England (the first such belts were made from leather or canvas and served as flimsy, short-distance transportation systems for sacks of grain), the scale and scope of their application continued to expand. By the turn of the 20^th century, conveyor belts were being used to unload materials of significant weight – things like lumber and wooden shingles – from out of railcars in Northern cities such as Minneapolis. With the discovery of electric energy and the consequent automation of production that electricity enabled, it was only a matter of time (1919) before the first automated “roller” conveyor was used for automotive production by none other than Henry Ford.

By the mid 1920s, conveyor belts were a “boomtown” industry. The developed nations in Europe and North America all strove to produce goods at a faster and more accurate rate than their competitors. Those who dwelt in the realm of hand-crafted or conventionally assembled products were caught off-guard and left in the wake of the Modern Era. During the Second World War, assembly lines became something of a national icon in America, in that they were used to churn out seemingly endless numbers of tanks, trucks, jeeps, fighters, and bombers for the Allied war effort against the Axis powers. The city of Detroit, birthplace of the Ford Motor Co. and the automotive assembly line, earned itself the new distinction as the “Arsenal of Democracy” on account of the sheer quantities of armaments it produced for American and Allied armies.

The basic science was already well in place by 1945, but improvements throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s left conveyor systems with better means of control over their own operation. Utilizing a series of internally powered rollers and pulleys, these new generations of conveyor belts paved the way for the megalithic, high-efficiency conveyance systems we see in operation today. As it stands, the longest conveyor belt in the world is located in Western Sahara, where it is used in phosphate mining.

Even as the basic operating principals continue to hold, there are continuous tweaks, fine-tunings, and upgrades being made to conveyor systems and conveyor belt weaves alike by companies far and wide. We at Furnace Belt are a proud, long-standing player in an industrial sector that has become an iconic symbol of capital-I “Industry” itself. As the 21^st century rolls along, so shall we.

Our Work in Open-Pit Mining (Part One of a 2-Part Mining Series)

All components of a blast furnace must be
able to withstand extreme heat.

When one of the largest mining consortiums in the world contacted us to deliver conveyor belting for their mining operations on two different continents, we knew it would be a challenge, but we also knew we were up for it. What we didn’t know at the time was that the customized weaving we would eventually produce would prove to be our most ambitious industrial belt-work to date.

The client in question operates multiple nickel refineries in different locations across the globe. One essential part of the nickel refining process is the desulfurization of unrefined “ore” into nickel briquettes. Desulfurization allows for excess quantities of extraneous sulfur to be extracted from the raw material, leaving the nickel itself in a more “purified” state, as well as giving it greater properties of corrosion-resistance. Needless to say, desulfurization requires a blast furnace of epic proportions, particularly on the monumental scale by which most nickel processing operations get carried out in today’s hyper-industrialized world. Furthermore, and almost needless to say, the conveyor belting that carries the raw nickel into the blast furnace in order for it to be desulfurized needs to have two essential qualities: first, that it be capable of withstanding the tremendous heat of the blast furnace; and second, that it be capable of handling the tremendous turnover rate at which industrial-scale mining is conducted.

We set out to instill those two qualities in the work we performed on behalf of our client. What we ended up delivering to our customer was, in of itself, a work of art by the standards of our industry: a 60” wide conveyor belt capable of enduring immense blast furnace heat at a level commensurate with our client’s rigorous standards.

With our experience crafting high-performance equipment for major players in the mining industry, we have grown increasingly interested in the various types of mining operations that happen around the globe, and how our belt weaves can be adapted and/or customized for specific kinds of mining (open-pit mining, etc.) An upcoming blog will explore some of the various types of mining operations that require industrial-sized conveyor belts to insure their proper functioning. In the meantime, we are pleased to add that our client has been very happy with the work we delivered on their behalf. For further questions about how Furnace Belt can be of service to your given mining operation, please contact us today by phone or by email.

HSE Guidance Code Issued for Conveyor Workstations

The Health and Safety Executive Council (HSE), England’s foremost workplace health regulator, has issued guidelines for companies operating conveyor belts in the United Kingdom. These reports are drawing some appreciative buzz from “across the Pond” in North America. Primarily, the HSE has found that one of the leading causes of injury for those who sort through packages and/or components on a conveyor belt is musculoskeletal disorder.

Musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs for short, come in a nasty variety of types. While certain injuries to the human musculature or bone structure can transpire suddenly, others are slow-developing, harder to detect, and all the more insidious for being those things. Specifically, the awkward physical postures that conveyor line workers often have to assume during the course of sorting can lead to long-term problems such as spinal or back-related injuries, as well as deterioration of the arms and hip-joints. Repetitious twisting, leaning, and stooping, not to mention repeatedly lifting heavy objects from off a conveyor line can lead to all these things.

Workplace safety is something we all need to take seriously; manufacturers as much as plant operators. The need for conveyor belt sorters and workers to be seated at workstations whenever possible is something that can prevent a large number of these injuries from occurring over the long-term. At Furnace Belt, we can easily accommodate any workplace safety issues customers may have while designing our conveyor belts. A healthy worker is a productive and happy worker, it almost goes without saying. Let us know at Furnace Belt how we can help make your workplace healthier, safer, and more productive.

Furnishing North America and the World with Conveyor Belts

Being that we’re already a transnational company with offices both in Ontario and Upstate New York, it shouldn't come as any surprise that Furnace Belt does a fair share of its business internationally. A good 10% of our total annual revenue on average comes not only from neighboring North American countries like Mexico, but also nations farther afield: places like Australia, South Africa, Turkey, and throughout the Middle East. All of these countries have sizable food processing and manufacturing industries (indeed some of them gargantuan), and all of them require conveyor belt meshes that let their production processes run smoothly and competitively. Since North America has a long legacy of providing quality industrial products, it only makes sense that other nations would reach out to places like Furnace Belt to furbish their production lines with the best technology money can buy.

For instance, Australia and South Africa have an abundance of mines dispersed across their territory. Australian copper and South African diamonds are, after all, practically household names in the global market. That being said, these countries rely upon a constant supply of industrial conveyor belts to extract the riches from beneath their soil. World-famous conglomerates in both of these countries would never be what they are without the necessary means of extraction engineering.

That’s what we’re here to do at Furnace Belt. As part of the North American manufacturing network that runs roughly from Chicago to north of Toronto, we make it our business to insure that other developing countries get the equipment they need to continue to grow their nascent economies. Global prosperity is a prospect we champion and relish the thought of. If you’re a customer in another country who wants durable, precision conveyor belt meshing for any type of industry, we’re always ready to hear from you via email or telephone. Let us know today!

The Promising Future of Indian Food Processing

Furnace Belt is considered a world leader in the manufacture of woven metal conveyor belting, so it should come as no surprise that we are quite interested and involved in the burgeoning Indian food processing industry. Over the past few years, the Indian food processing industry has taken off like a rocket, which in turn has created a nearly insatiable demand for cutting edge technology and machinery.  

According to a report from the influential Technology Exports Development Organization (TEDO), the Government of India has given commercializing agriculture and developing food processing high priority in developing India’s economy. Unfortunately, the report also points out that the agro-food processing equipment sector is lagging behind other developed countries. This technological discrepancy stymies the food processing industry, since modern equipment like the conveyor belts we make at Furnace Belt aren’t available for small to mid-sized Indian companies.

The products we make at Furnace Belt allow for produce and meats to reach the market place with consistent level of quality, as well as being free of potentially hazardous bacteria.  The only way to truly grow the industry is to methodically upgrade the equipment and infrastructure so that the people of India trust that their food supply is wholesome and without blemish. The government has set a goal to triple the size of the industry by 2014-15. An Indian academic, V Gokul Das, MD summarizes as such: “Future prospects for the industry are pretty bright. It is a growing sector as there is mass movement from villages to cities and there are new products that are being launched for the food and beverage sector.”

For everyone at Furnace Belt this is an exciting time. We look forward to introducing even more of our conveyor belting to India’s new and seismically growing food and beverage processing industry.