Conveyor System Doubles As Quick-Change Artist

In the past it took 20 to 25 minutes to cool lollipops in molds riding on a conveyor belt between the kitchen and wrapping department. After installing a DynaCon Modular Conveyor System, that cooling time has been reduced to 10 minutes, more than doubling productivity on the line.

“Before purchasing the modular conveyor we were convinced that we could improve product flow. We already had the kitchen capacity. All we needed to do was efficiently lower the temperature of the lollipops,” says Bob Edgecombe, Carriage Candy principal and plant manager. “Initially, we thought about purchasing a cooling tunnel for our existing conveyor. But they were expensive and might not be adaptable to our future needs.”

Although Edgecombe was impressed with the solidness of the high-impact plastic conveyor sections and their availability in a variety of widths, most important was that the system offered a wide array of accessories, including cooling fans, that integrate with the conveyor modules.

Carriage Candy purchased a 14-foot modular system with 32 attachable fans that cool the lollipops in trays riding on a link belt. A variable-speed drive enables the conveyor operator to adjust the speed of the belt as required to ensure that the candy is sufficiently cool when it arrives at the wrapping department.

“The fans draw the air from underneath the belt and blow it up onto the molds, and the belt is open so that air is coming through the belt, hitting the molds and cooling them down,” explains Edgecombe. “The system is highly efficient, expandable, easy to service and it saved us a lot of money.”

When Carriage Candy ordered its system, a DynaCon sales engineer inquired about possible future reconfigurations and new applications that the customer might have. When Bob Edgecombe said that eventually he planned to integrate a 90-degree radius turn and lengthen the conveyor run, the engineer advised him to upgrade the order to an appropriate drive and belting. When Carriage Candy moves ahead with the new configuration, they will be able to do so with almost no delay in production.

“For us to reconfigure with a 90-degree radius turn, all we have to do is buy that conveyor module,” Edgecombe explains. “We can extend the belt 18 inches or 8 feet, just by popping in the necessary number of 18-inch modules and adding a number of links to the belt. To clean the belt, we take it right off the conveyor, scrub it down in the sink, dry it off and put it back on. It’s quick and it’s easy. It’s a beautiful system to work with.”

Al Mitchell, president of Mitchell Associates (Milwaukee, Wis.), says that food products are among his favorite applications for modular conveyor systems. He says because they often involve “indexing,” which requires that items must be conveyed in specific quantities according to exact timing.

With variable speed conveyor motors and indexing capabilities, DynaCon conveyors are ideal for applications such as placing flavor packets in soup mixes. In that setup, the major soup ingredients are poured from a filling machine into master packages. In a secondary operation, the conveyor indexes forward exactly 13 1/ 2, inches 60 times per minute and deposits a flavor packet into the master soup mix package. That indexing capability can improve the efficiency of many applications.

“I’ve never seen a conveyor system with that many features,” adds Mitchell. “It fits beautifully into many production and packaging schemes, and is a ‘quick-change artist’ that maximizes usage and ROI like nothing else on the market.”

Jill Batka, president of Dynamic Conveyor, says that the DynaCon system is not only used in food processing, but also for harvesting produce. “We’ve sold systems for picking operations, such as a blueberry farm, where equipment has to be both flexible and highly portable, a prerequisite for many fruit and vegetable harvesting operations.”