Stadthagen, Germany
The medium-sized company Minda is a specialist in special plant engineering and develops customized solutions for internal material handling and intralogistics.
The company’s biggest clients come from the automotive industry where it’s particularly successful with worker belts for flat conveyors.
Minda offers worker belt components that are modular, flexible and easy to install. Workers carry out their work while standing on a plastic modular belt to the left and right of the vehicle that moves synchronously with it. The belts can be operated connected in a series or on their own. A plug and play principle allows the belts to be installed anywhere very quickly. Due to (non-moving) dummies to fill in the spaces between the belts a cost-effective adjustable layout is created that (at not even 120 mm) is very low in height.
An exceptionally robust 1” modular belt with ESD characteristics is required for this application. It also has to be slip-resistant, flame-retardant and very low in height.
Our Siegling Prolink series 8, in the S8-0 SRS PXX-HC BK version, can do more than just simply meet the requirements made. The belts are fitted with fully conductive modules and have electrical volume resistance, which (especially in conjunction with being extremely flame retardant) is way under that of comparable products on the market. The surface is slip-resistant and has an R10 classification despite not having a raised pattern. Therefore it’s pleasant for workers to stand or kneel on and it’s easy to clean. To prevent small components like screws or nuts from falling in it, special scrapers can be used because the modules’ surface is flat. Thanks to the small 1” pitch, heights of approx. 100 – 120 mm are possible.
Without making major changes to the conveyor, Minda was able to use our plastic Prolink series 8 belt to meet the specifications made by the end consumer (a major German automotive manufacturer). These include improving electrical conductivity and meeting the flame retardancy specifications laid down in the current DIN EN standard.
Forbo strictly adhered to the precise width tolerances, enabling a cost-saving conveyor design. Furthermore, the wear and tear on the belts was reduced due to the hard-wearing design of the modules. As a result, the belts’ service lives are must longer compared with other products.
The use of scrapers on the flat surface prevented a lot of the damage that could be caused from small components falling into the conveyor.
Minda has to date fitted about more than 1,000 conveyors with the Prolink series 8 modular belt.
