Bunting and Smiley Monroe focus on enhancing belts for Overband Magnets

An innovative new belt for Overband Magnets is being designed through a partnership between Bunting and Smiley Monroe. This new belt will be an enhancement on the ToughFlex® belt and it will bring along lots of benefits such as an increased resistance to excessive wear, especially during challenging working conditions.

Overband Magnets are well-known for their design which includes a permanent or electromagnetic block mounted between two pulleys and above this, a cleaning belt continuously runs. Throughout operations, the Overband Magnets remain suspended above a conveyor transporting materials such as industrial or household waste, or even quarried rock. As the magnet block is positioned in the centre, its magnetic field attracts ferrous metals, as well as other magnetic materials and can lift them out and away from the conveyed materials.

Whilst this process occurs, a cleaning belt with upstands remains constantly in motion and this belt sits between the magnet face and the separated metals. Its purpose is to transfer captured material away from the conveyor, out of the magnetic field and into a separate collection area. The issue with this process is that the separated metal can be angular and normally have sharp edges, having the potential to damage the rubber cleaning belt. This can cause a problem when it comes to applications such as managing industrial and commercial waste, as this is the point at which high volumes of metal in sharp forms often cause belt damage.

Therefore, a large focus point currently is extending belt life, especially in difficult applications. This is where the partnership between Bunting and Smiley Monroe came around. Smiley Monroe is a leading manufacturer when it comes to endless conveyor belts, cut rubber and finally, plastic components for the materials processing equipment manufacturing sector. This company is a leader in its field due to the practices they put in place to ensure that abrasion resistance, tensile strength, and adhesion levels are regularly tested. These tests for adhesion are applied to both the cover rubber and fabric plies of the company’s raw materials, as well as, their finished products which are kept in their advanced laboratories. Smiley Monroe work with this system to ensure that their equipment is compliant with DIN, ISP and company standards.

Smiley Monroe recommended the ToughFlex® Belt. The ToughFlex® belts are specifically designed to be used in the most demanding applications. This includes things such as bulk handling to mobile crushing. In order to make them so effective, these belts are manufactured with a special weave of two fabric plies, as well as an additional binder warp. The reinforced plies enable the of resistance of punctures, coupled with, heavy-duty, wear-resistant top and bottom covers to provide extra protection.

Users have proven that the ultra-strong, yet still lightweight, ElectroMax Overband Magnet has been able to achieve higher levels of metal separation, which has in turn resulted in increased belt wear. Conversely, the lower magnetic power of permanent Overband Magnets have shown results of less successful metal separation, however, less belt wear. Therefore, the selected belt material and design has already proved effective in minimising damage from ferrous metals piercing and tearing the belt. This is also the case when the materials are excessively angular and have multiple sharp edges. This is highly beneficial as the result is less maintenance, as well as extended production hours between belt replacements.

The decision was made within the partnership to enable the design teams to collaborate and adapt the belt, making it suitable for Overband Magnet applications. This means the companies had to ensure that integrally moulded cleats were added in order to make the transfer of captured ferrous metals possible.

Bunting’s Technical Director, Adrian Coleman “We are continually looking [to] make improvements that help our customers. An increasing number of our customers are turning to the ElectroMax Overband Magnet because of its increased magnetic power and compact design. However, for certain applications, we identified the benefit of using a belt with better wear characteristics and contacted Smiley Monroe.”