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One common benefit of Motor Driven Roller Conveyors (MDR) is that they can accumulate products with zero pressure. Connected to a tote stacker and de-stacker device, Pack Air Inc. built a zero pressure accumulation conveyor system to handle the stacks of totes. With reintroduction functionality, this holding area can accumulate stacks of totes off the main production line with minimum space requirements. 49 stacks of up to 8 totes high can be held in each accumulation lane with 5 lanes total. This equates to 1,960 totes that could fill up the entire system!
A series of five Pop-up transfers diverts the stacked totes into one of the accumulation lanes. Each lane consists of motor driven roller conveyor and photo eyes that work together to help accumulate the product using zero pressure. Lift gate sections, after each Pop-up transfer section, also allow for easy maintenance access between the lanes.
Once the first lane is full and the pop-up transfer deactivates, it will then activate the second right-angle transfer device to fill up the second accumulation lane. This process continues until all the lanes are filled or reintroduction of the totes is called for by the operator. Once ready for reintroduction, the MDR conveyors release the stacked totes one at a time onto an identical set of outfeed pop-up transfers. This MDR and transfer combo maneuver totes out of the holding area and to the de-stacking machine.
This process allows for a first-in-first-out (FIFO) accumulation process during production. All the stacks will be reintroduced in chronological order until the last lane of the holding system is clear. The stacker device can still feed the accumulation area with lanes 2, 3, 4, and 5 being full. However, the incoming totes are right angle transferred into the first lane because it has been cleared out. If all lanes are full, the stacker and buffer system will stop conveying until the downstream problem is fixed.
