Conveyor belt

[3650tom]

Hi there!

I was wondering if there are people here who have experience with building conveyor belts from lego?
I'm making a design for a crushing and screening plant. It will use crumbled biscuits as material. I already built a model in LDD, but I'm not really satisfied with the design of the conveyor belts.

It's necessary to have a curved belt, so there will be no material that falls of the conveyor. I made another design for a conveyor, but it uses a lot of parts and I'm not sure if this will work.
 

Thanks guys!

[Lakop]

Best thing is to use the tracks as used on 42069. You moc looks good.

H

[mahjqa]

I would advise against crumbled biscuits; that stuff will get everywhere, jamming up gears. Also, it'll slip through every tiny crack there is. I wouldn't be surprised that stuff left behind will get pretty funky after a while. 

I've seen other folks use coarse sawdust (I suppose like the stuff for hamster cages). It's light, airy, doesn't biodegrade as much. 

Personally, I'd look for some sort of plastic solution. Perhaps buy tons of regular technic pins? They're very cheap on bricklink if you buy them in massive quantities.

[3650tom]

26 minutes ago, mahjqa said:

I would advise against crumbled biscuits; that stuff will get everywhere, jamming up gears. Also, it'll slip through every tiny crack there is. I wouldn't be surprised that stuff left behind will get pretty funky after a while. 

I've seen other folks use coarse sawdust (I suppose like the stuff for hamster cages). It's light, airy, doesn't biodegrade as much. 

Personally, I'd look for some sort of plastic solution. Perhaps buy tons of regular technic pins? They're very cheap on bricklink if you buy them in massive quantities.

Thanks! Yeah sounds great, but I'm afraid it wouldn't really work out, because I made some crushing mechanisms like in a real gravel plant.
 

 

 

36 minutes ago, Horace T said:

Best thing is to use the tracks as used on 42069. You moc looks good.

H

Thanks! Yes that would be much easier to work with, but the problem is that the conveyor would have small holes in it, where the material falls through.

[knotian]

I have used the large treads as in the Excavator model. I don't know what you want to use as the belt. I've seen rubber bumpers used. I would not sweat the 'crusher'. looking at the design you could space the 'jaws' so that small pins drop through and the illusion would still be there.

I use 1x1 round tiles (black and grey) as coal and limestone in my build. They won't fall through the belt, and if you space things right they won't jam up either. I had a bottom feeding hopper for a coal tipple loading into the cars. EV3 color sensor to determine if there was a car present and a timer block to load a set amount of product. Just use bricks and tiles on the side to make a channel in which the belt would run.

[Captainowie]

From the rollers, it looks like you're imagining a belt that holds a V-shape while it's carrying a load, then flattens out as it goes over the drive wheels and returns. Do I have that right?
In that case, the only option you have is to go non-LEGO with something you make yourself - perhaps using strips from a bicycle inner tube.

If you want to stick with LEGO, then I'd echo the suggestions of the others, to use plastic parts so that you can control the minimum size of the things the belts are carrying. Every purist solution will have rigid lengths that must necessarily expose gaps for tiny crumbs to fall through, even if it's only at the sprockets.

If you do go with the track links, you can get little rubber plugs to cover the holes (or half-pins, to get the same effect at a fraction of the cost). Then all you have to worry about is the gaps between the links - but as I said, you're always going to have that problem. Unless you can construct something with smooth surfaces that slide over each other. But any such solution is going to be extremely bulky.

Incidentally, I see that you have a couple of belts that start off horizontal and then angle up. If you use a flat belt, how are you going to keep tension on the belt while also keeping it on the rollers? You'd want some rollers on the top of the belt to hold it down. I suspect it only works in real life because the rock/gravel is much heavier than the belt.

Good luck, though, and keep us informed of your progress.

Owen.

[3650tom]

On 16-12-2017 at 8:20 PM, knotian said:

I have used the large treads as in the Excavator model. I don't know what you want to use as the belt. I've seen rubber bumpers used. I would not sweat the 'crusher'. looking at the design you could space the 'jaws' so that small pins drop through and the illusion would still be there.

I use 1x1 round tiles (black and grey) as coal and limestone in my build. They won't fall through the belt, and if you space things right they won't jam up either. I had a bottom feeding hopper for a coal tipple loading into the cars. EV3 color sensor to determine if there was a car present and a timer block to load a set amount of product. Just use bricks and tiles on the side to make a channel in which the belt would run.

I'm planning on using an inner tube from a bike! Thanks for the tips, do you have pictures of your build? It sounds really interesting.

[3650tom]

On 17-12-2017 at 12:50 AM, Captainowie said:

From the rollers, it looks like you're imagining a belt that holds a V-shape while it's carrying a load, then flattens out as it goes over the drive wheels and returns. Do I have that right?
In that case, the only option you have is to go non-LEGO with something you make yourself - perhaps using strips from a bicycle inner tube.

If you want to stick with LEGO, then I'd echo the suggestions of the others, to use plastic parts so that you can control the minimum size of the things the belts are carrying. Every purist solution will have rigid lengths that must necessarily expose gaps for tiny crumbs to fall through, even if it's only at the sprockets.

If you do go with the track links, you can get little rubber plugs to cover the holes (or half-pins, to get the same effect at a fraction of the cost). Then all you have to worry about is the gaps between the links - but as I said, you're always going to have that problem. Unless you can construct something with smooth surfaces that slide over each other. But any such solution is going to be extremely bulky.

Incidentally, I see that you have a couple of belts that start off horizontal and then angle up. If you use a flat belt, how are you going to keep tension on the belt while also keeping it on the rollers? You'd want some rollers on the top of the belt to hold it down. I suspect it only works in real life because the rock/gravel is much heavier than the belt.

Good luck, though, and keep us informed of your progress.

Owen.

Yes, that's the plan, using an inner tube from a bicycle. I'm making some modifications in the design so there are no angled conveyor belts in the model. Thanks for the tips!