A RELIABLE CONVEYOR
MAINTENANCE SPECIALIST
MAINTENANCE SPECIALIST
Depending on the nature of the damage to your rubber conveyor belt, specialists will either bolt a mechanical plate in place or use a hot vulcanisation process to properly bond the rubber together.
For most of the history of conveyor belts, vulcanised rubber, as invented by Charles Goodyear, has been the material of choice, as its strength, durability, versatility and level of flex meant that belt conveyors could be longer, faster and more powerful.
However, the choice of belt material also affects which repair options are available, how long they take and how effective they are at preventing a long-term loss of productivity.
Repairs are often a trade-off between quick fixes that ensure that important production and waste management processes can be restarted quickly, and long-term repairs that restore your belt to almost its original strength and functionality.
To help with this, here are the three main repair methods sorted from the best option to alternative fixes that should only be used in emergencies.
The most effective and most intensive repair solution, hot vulcanisation is where a repair patch of rubber is spliced into the belt structure to create a clean, uniform finish.
The process involves slicing away the area that is damaged, adding a rubber strip in its place, before using a controlled vulcanising press machine to provide enough pressure and heat to chemically bond the new rubber to the existing belt.
The process requires specialist equipment and can take up to 12 hours to complete, given that the belt needs to cool down completely before it can be used again.
However, because the repair process creates the same kinds of chemical bonds used to vulcanise rubber in the first place, the result is practically as strong as the belt was when it was originally used.
As well as this, its biggest advantage is that there are no aberrations, kinks or uneven parts of the surface. It remains clean and uniform, which means that there are no weak points for moisture to get in, for machinery or product to wear at or a weak point that can cause a tear.
An inexpensive, fast and relatively simple alternative that can provide a temporary repair, cold bonding involves the use of an adhesive and repair patch, where an additional piece of rubber is stuck onto the belt.
In an emergency, it can help get your conveyor belt working again as soon as the adhesive dries, but a cold-bonded repair will always be a weak point until you arrange a permanent fix, in the same way a puncture repair kit is designed to get your car to the nearest garage.
This means that a belt placed under high tension, which operates under intense heat or is dealing with high levels of material flow, will inevitably fail and often fail very quickly.
Outside of temporary fixes whilst arranging hot vulcanisation, cold bonding should mostly be used for fixing slight edge damage, surface defects and small cases of uneven wear that are not significant enough to damage the belt itself.
The fastest of the quick fix methods, mechanical plates and hinges can physically put your conveyor belt back together in less than an hour without any worries about preparing the rubber surface or curing the adhesive.
For conveyor belts operating with low tension and at low speeds, they work very well as an emergency fix, but the problem with them is that the fasteners themselves become an exposed point that can catch on conveyor scrapers or the head pulley, leading to escalating tracking problems.
If you need to get going as quickly as possible, a fastener will work very well, but they should be considered a temporary repair whilst you arrange vulcanisation or a full replacement.
Each repair job should be considered on a case-by-case basis, but in general a repair should be done when the damage is localised (such as a puncture or small tear) whilst the belt maintains its structural stability and rigidity.
However, there are points where the scale of damage or the nature of previous repairs means that further repairs stop being appropriate and nothing short of a replacement will ensure your conveyor belt continues to work safely.
The main rules of thumb are: