The MunchMan
Jorgensen Conveyors, Inc. is proud to announce the development of its newest conveyor for metal cutting machine tool chip removal. The new MunchMan hinged steel belt conveyor is designed specifically to handle heavy chip loads and large stringy chips and balls of chips generated in milling and turning applications where high work piece stock removal rates exist. “So often in these kinds of high demand applications today, the conveyor just fails to pass the chips and stringers through to the discharge point and these chips jam up at the lower transition and elevating sections” says John D’Amico, Co-Principal and head of Sales for Jorgensen. “These hard jams of the conveyor result in costly machine downtime and often take a good amount of manual intervention to resolve” says D’Amico.
The MunchMan hinged steel belt conveyor employs a unique stacked conveyor arrangement at the lower curve and through the incline and chip discharge of the system. A traditional horizontal hinged belt load section transitions to the incline when a second hinged steel belt conveyor mounted above the primary conveyor is running the belt in the same direction as the primary belt. Both belts are designed with carrying cleats. As the chips and stringy balls of chips go through the transition at the lower curve, the chips and chip balls are literally sucked in and pinched between the two moving belts through the incline and discharge area. Chips are effectively compressed and trapped until they are forced off the discharge end of the conveyor. “The physical effect of two cleated moving belts compressing and moving the difficult long stingy chips and larger chip volumes is dramatic when compared to traditional single belt conveying systems” says D’Amico. “We have observed where this conveyor actually munches down these chips to a lesser volume, thus reducing a customer’s material handling costs – hence the name MunchMan!” says D’Amico.
The MunchMan can be designed to effectively fit into most of today’s CNC lathes and machining centers, and has little or no effect on the space required vs. traditional single belt chip conveyors. Come and see the MunchMan on display and in operation in the Jorgensen Conveyors booth #5724 at the upcoming IMTS machine tool event at Chicago’s McCormick Place, September 10 – 15, 2012.
