Conveyor belts are used in a multitude of industries, mainly for horizontal transport but also for ascending and descending applications. Conveyor belts are used in industrial applications but also on large farms, in warehousing, from freight-handling, down to your local supermarket and in movement of bulk raw materials.

Assume you are buying a new conveyor, or you are replacing a worn or broken belt. How do you choose the right conveyor belt for your product? How do you get that product to do what you want, when you want, without damage to the belt or the product? It’s not as straightforward as you might think. Here are some basic points to consider, we will look at others in later articles.

You love your product and you want to get it to where you want it, normally as fast as possible, without damage and without losing it! Therefore the product itself has a huge impact on your conveyor belt choice.

Has the product got sharp edges? How heavy is it? How light is it even? Do you want the product to grip to the belt? Do you want the product to slide on the belt, or to put it another way the belt keeps going but the product stands still at a stop perhaps (this is called accumulation). How hot is the product? How cold is the product?

Belt materials will have minimum and maximum temperatures within which they will work, but outside of which they will perish in one form or another. Some belts are designed to grip the product, which is fine if you are going uphill or downhill, but what if you want to queue the products, or swipe them across the belt? A high grip belt will give you headaches if you want to slide the product as it’s amazing sometimes how much grip they have. Conversely, if you are conveying uphill, a slippy belt surface will result in the products perhaps sliding back down. Because of the multitude of uses, belts with many different surface characteristics are available and may be used for many different product characteristics.

Fortunately, most belt manufacturers issue very detailed data about conveyor belt materials. They want you to be happy but they also want to cover themselves and make it clear what their product will and won’t do. Make sure you use the manufacturers’ instructions when choosing your belt. If it’s a big expensive belt, get a salesman in. Belt prices can vary greatly so always get a second price. The right choice will mean you get many years of good service from your new belt. Make the wrong choice and you could be shelling out for a new one very soon.

In part 2 we can look at the characteristics of the conveyor machine itself and how that can affect your belt choice.