Drive belt guard for a roller conveyor
AssigneeTKF, Inc.
InventorsRonald L. Eubanks, John Erwin Treft
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A belt guard for a drive belt on a roller conveyor system, that can be positioned adjacent the drive belt and between adjacent conveyor rollers to guard the side edges of the drive belt from inadvertent or intentional entanglement of a person's fingers or other body parts or clothing in the rotating rollers and drive belts. A guard assembly is provided having a first and second belt guard members affixed together and disposed on opposite sides of the drive belt. The invention also includes a roller conveying system that has a plurality of the spaced-apart cylindrical rollers, driven by a plurality of a circular drive belt, and a nip guard system having a plurality of nip guard means that guard the nips and/or sides of the revolving drive belts.
Claims19
A belt guard for use with a drive belt that is in driving contact between respective drive portions of a pair of adjacent, rotating cylindrical conveyor rollers, the belt guard including an upper edge and opposed first and second ends, each first and second end having a concave portion configured for interference-free and confronting orientation with said drive portions, and an upper arm extending from both the first and second ends for engaging an upper part of said drive portion proximate a nip between the roller and the drive belt, for retaining the belt guard in the confronting orientation with said drive portions.
A roller conveying system comprising:
- a plurality of spaced-apart cylindrical rollers, each roller having a tubular conveying portion having a first radius, and at least one drive portion having an outermost surface of a second radius smaller than the first radius, and wherein the upper peripheries of the conveying portions of adjacent rotatable rollers form a conveying surface;
- a plurality of drive belts, each belt in driving contact with the respective drive portions of a pair of adjacent rollers to define a first nip area and a second nip area;
- and
- a plurality of nip guard means, each nip guard means positioned proximate at least one of the first nip area and the second nip area, and configured so that no part of the nip guard means extends above the conveying surface proximate the drive portions of the pair of adjacent rollers.
A nip guard system for use in a roller conveying system that includes a plurality of spaced-apart rotating cylindrical rollers, comprising at least a pair of adjacent rollers, each roller having a tubular conveying portion having a periphery defined by a first radius, and at least one drive portion having an outermost surface of a second radius less than the first radius, and wherein an upper portion of the peripheries of the conveying portions of the pair of adjacent rollers forms a conveying surface;
- and a plurality of drive belts, each of the plurality of drive belts in driving contact with the drive portions of the pair of adjacent rollers and forming a nip where the drive belt advances onto the drive portion, the nip guard system comprising a plurality of nip guard means that obstruct access by an exogenous object to the plurality of nips.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.