Materials Handling System for a Major Rubber Manufacturer

Feeding a continuous production process with raw materials is no easy task – particularly when that process requires the mix of raw materials in specific quantities with little or no room for error.  This was just one of the puzzles that faced Chess Engineering’s design engineers when the company was awarded the contract to design and build a raw materials handling system for a new rubber plant in south-west Sydney.

Another hurdle was to lift up multiple 220 kg loads of raw rubber plus additives to a height of some six metres while keeping manual handling to a minimum.

The solutions to these and to other tricky problems can be found in the recently commissioned system now meeting production targets for the customer.

Based on a series of five ‘chariots’ each of two compartments - one holding the raw rubber and the other additives such as carbon black – the system consists of a series of scissor lifts, motorised rollers and gravity rollers and incorporates a weighing facility to ensure accuracy of mix. Each chariot is fitted with its own conveyor for offloading the raw materials into the mixer.

The chariots are loaded manually, weighed, and automatically lifted to the next level where they are transferred to the charging point by motorised rollers.  Here, each chariot is locked and isolated and the internal conveyor system activated manually.  When the load is cleared, the operator de-activates the internal system and unlocks the empty chariot which then returns to ground level via gravity rollers and another scissor lift.

Able to move some 10 to 13 tonnes per hour, the system is fitted with a series of electronic and mechanical safety devices including light curtains, safety fences and captive key isolators to ensure  optimum safety of operation.