We had dinner with one of our salesmen last night, Don Petsch of Mike Petsch and Associates. As you might guess by the name, he is second generation in this business and has the experience that goes with that. He has been building conveyors with his dad since high school and has seen a lot of solutions, across a variety of industries, in his years of working with our product line.

As we ate the conversation turned to FlexLink, which is pretty much inevitable during our dinner conversations. We talked about the differences between X65 and XL and X85 and its precursor XM. But that isn’t what inspired me to write this morning. What inspired me to write this morning was one sentence, “You can move a refrigerator on an XM conveyor.”

Yes, you just read that correctly. We run into this misconception that a product has to be completely surrounded by a belt in order to move and orient it very frequently, and that is just not the case. Commonly, it is a much more economical option to move that refrigerator, box, bundle, can, package, or whatever else you might be handling down the line on a single belt with a creative guiderail solution.

I don’t think I am letting you in on any trade secrets when I tell you that a 2.48″/63mm wide conveyor is generally cheaper than a 11.61″/295mm one. Not only is looking at moving products that way economical, it has great benefits with respect to your floor space too. The price doesn’t even take into consideration the world of reorienting options that you have when you utilize something like a cleated X85 conveyor with offset guiderail. Suddenly you don’t have to use plain bends, you can use wheel bends and cut your floor space requirements down considerably. You can even use narrow belts with hold down rails, wedges, or drawbridge conveyors to move boxes up almost vertical inclines! How great is that?

We do have some great options with belt conveyors in order to maximize floor space too, and even belt conveyors can use creative guiderail solutions in order to maximize the return on your investment. The same principles apply. You never know just how many ways your problem can be solved by thinking outside of the box.

Would you like to know more? Give us a call to discuss your project. Let us help you to find the best solution for your material handling problems!