Mainway Ontario Made MDR

Typically, conventional conveyors run all the time whether they are accumulating product or not. One of the greatest aspects of motorized drive roller conveyors is the fact that, with the proper control system strategy, MDR zones only run when they need to. In a typical MDR system, the rollers in any given zone only run 10% to 50% of operational time. You could realize a savings of 30% to 70% in energy savings alone, which means a faster return on investment for your business.

Large, conventional motors can be extremely dangerous for your warehouse personnel. A stray hand, limb, or piece of clothing can lead to tragic injury if caught up in a bad place or pinch point while the conveyor is running. In addition, such motors use tremendous amounts of power, which can also present warehouse dangers. The motorized drive roller in a typical MDR zone is powered by 24 volts DC, and has no major pinch points. Moreover, MDR only has to provide motive power and torque to a short zone, so there is never enough drive power to be dangerous. In most cases, you can literally grab a running motorized roller with your bare hand and make it stop with only a handshake grip.

MDR conveyor systems are much quieter than conventional conveyors. Conventional conveyor usually uses chains and sprockets somewhere in its drive train. Vibration is then transferred to conveyor frames, supports, and rollers, and the resulting noise can be a significant hazard. To make matters worse, in most conventional systems, the motor and drive train runs all the time, so you have chain noise and vibration whether or not you are conveying or accumulating product.

The phrase “plug and play” has become ubiquitous in product marketing. Many companies and products promise you “plug and play” because it sounds nice, but fail to deliver the “plug” or the “play.” Motorized drive roller conveyor systems make “plug and play” a reality.

With the proper control system strategy applied up front, a typical motorized drive roller section is electrically pre-wired at the manufacturer prior to shipment. A typical section will utilize plug connectors at each end to allow the unit to be set in place and simply plugged into the unit in front of it and the unit behind it to make it operational.

As a result, you can easily add or remove sections of conveyor as needed to alter or re-route your conveyor path (even temporarily) to accommodate the changing needs of your business. Also, with the proper control system strategy applied, your own people can make changes and modifications with minimal assistance from the original conveyor equipment or control system provider.

Most conveyor manufacturers have embraced the motorized drive roller conveyor concept in one form or another. As time goes on, motorized drive roller products are being placed on the market to solve traditional material handling functions other than just zero pressure accumulation.

The inherent advantages of motorized drive roller conveyor design mean your maintenance and spare parts costs are dramatically lowered.

Because MDR conveyors only run as needed, there’s less wear and tear to the component parts. Most of the maintenance and wear associated with conventional conveyors comes from the drive train (sprockets, chains, belt lacing, etc.). Even the most modern and efficient gear motors require regular maintenance and lubrication.

The typical motorized drive roller, however, utilizes sealed for life bearings, which means much longer base equipment life. Moreover, for any given system, most of the motors will be interchangeable, which means you only have to stock one spare part. Contrast this with the typical conventional system where gear motors can differ greatly in size within a single conveyor system, each one needing its own stock of spares, and the advantage of going with MDR is clear.

Due to the inter-connectivity of the drive cards and zones you can check on the status of each drive roller along with having the ability to change rollers and bands with minimal effort as they can be changed individually rather then needing to changed or remove a whole section. 

The right design concept is the key to getting the most out of your MDR conveyor system. The conveyor equipment industry provides the mechanical building blocks and tools to move materials, but the control system is what makes it go, slow down, speed up, and stop when you need it to. The ideal control system for motorized drive roller conveyor is distributed within each conveyor section, because each section only needs to know what is going on in front of it, and only needs to tell the section behind it what it’s doing.

Control strategies that allow for data and information handling within an MDR control system further open the door to utilizing MDR solutions by enabling more intelligent functionality, such as product tracking and sorting. Until now, these things have been the sole province of conventional conveyor systems with custom control systems.