Development of a Belt Conveyor for Small Scale Industry

Most small scale industries rely on human effort for transporting raw materials from one stage of processing to another thereby reducing the overall system performance. The work discusses the development of a belt conveyor system for small scale industry. The conveyor is of height 0.75 m at 0o angle of inclination, 35o troughing angle and a surcharge angle of 25o. It also consist of a belt whose width is 410 mm, length 2.4 m and a basic length 4.54 m. The conveyor has an average capacity of 43.75 tonnes/hr. The evaluation of the conveyor was carried out by conveying 12 packs of bottled water of different weights across a distance of 2 m at a different speeds ranging from of 200-400 rpm. Results obtained indicated that the time of conveying the materials increases with increase in weight of the bottled water. The successful completion of this work provides a conveyor system which will aid the movement of material from one place to another with little or no human intervention. This will help the industry in reducing cost in acquiring labour that will be used in material movement thereby reducing cost of production.