Industrial Equipment Repair

Operating and maintaining manufacturing equipment already comes with some known costs, but unexpected equipment failures can increase those costs exponentially, especially when you cannot see where the failure occurred or where it is located. This is often the case with drag chain conveyors used in a manufacturing process that requires those conveyors to be fully enclosed to prevent dust and fumes (fugitive emissions) from escaping into the environment.

When a fully enclosed drag chain conveyor breaks down, and a repair is required to get it back running again, the covers must be removed to locate the problem. These conveyors move stuff between point A and point B, those points may be hundreds of feet away and 100 feet above the ground, further complicating the repair process. To access the covers, one or more man-lifts must be used to lift repair technicians and their tools. A crane is then needed to lift off and lower each cover safely to the ground. The covers are removed until the area that caused the breakdown is discovered or when there are no more covers to be removed.

To reduce these costs, we developed a device that allows a camera to be placed directly inside the conveyor where it can ride along on the drag chain and take a video of the conveyor's entire internal surface area, including structural supports and drive components. This video can then be analyzed to determine the cause of the problem and where it is located, allowing repair efforts and resources to be solely focused on the problem, not wasting time risking injuries searching for the problem.

This inspection device helps protect the camera, lighting, and other related electronics from damage, and provides alternative ways to be secured to the chain in a drag chain conveyor, which include magnets, screws, steel cable, etc. To ensure the camera can see the problem we are searching for, it is accompanied with an L.E.D light that illuminates all the otherwise dark internals of the conveyor. An auxiliary battery can also be placed inside to power both the camera and light to increase the recording time.

Here are some examples of the devices we provide: