In the packaging industry, the majority of drives, usually consisting of a geared motor and a frequency inverter, are used in the plant's conveyor and palletiser sections. Helical geared motors are the preferred choice for systems used in the beverage industry because of their cost-effectiveness and their high gear unit efficiency of 95%. However, where space is tight, the drives must usually be installed laterally, ie, in parallel with the conveyor belts. Shaft-mounted helical-bevel and helical-worm gear nits are particularly suitable for these locations as they can be mounted onto the drive shaft without additional components.
In the SEW range, the SA57 (helical-worm) and KA47 (helical-bevel) gear units offer a standard hollow shaft with the same mounting dimensions which allows customers to change to right-angle units with ease. The full range meets all the requirements for a typical drive specification for a conveyor application in a wet location including: high starting torque, three-shift operation, short-term full-load and permanent partial-load operation, no maintenance required, oil-tightness, long life, speed control capability, resistance to moisture, vapour and detergents, balanced capital cost/running cost ratio.
In the photograph, SEW geared motors are used for automatically loading packages of coffee filters onto pallets. The filter packets coming from production are sorted in tilting cup sorters, backed up on conveyor belts and then loaded onto pallets as a complete layer. In this application, only two units drive the palletiser: a type SA42 0,75 kW worm drive is shown left and a type DFT 0,37 kW motor at the right.
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