Author Topic: Walking Beam Conveyor  (Read 20802 times)

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Walking Beam Conveyor
« on: October 14, 2016, 06:57:08 PM »
I am tired of building engines. I need another machine to drive with my engines, and this time I think I will try something "industrial" in nature. One of the more fascinating types of conveyors is a "walking beam" conveyor. These conveyors were, when first invented, used to convey a piece of material from one position to the next, to the next, thru a series of "stations", where the piece being conveyed had some type of automated function performed on it at each station. Newer "walking beam" conveyors are mostly driven by either hydraulics, rack and pinion gears, or a combination of both. Earlier walking beams were purely mechanical in their operation. I have been playing about with concepts this morning, and even went across town to the model R.C. hobby shop and purchased a couple of sets of metal miter gears to be used to transfer power from the blue disc seen at one end of the animation to the blue disc on the other end, utilizing a shaft drive like the older BSA motorcycles. This link takes you to a short video of the basic concept. I will be working on a fully developed 3D model of this machine over the next few weeks, and then hope to build it in my machine shop.----Brian
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak2eMgt7yLw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak2eMgt7yLw</a>

Offline crueby

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2016, 08:54:11 PM »
Looks like fun! That type of motion, though turned upside down, has been used on walker feet for huge bucket mining machines too, I think.

Offline Bluechip

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2016, 09:02:46 PM »
Quaint variation which, for reasons unknown   :Lol: , never really caught on ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Horse_locomotive

Dave
« Last Edit: October 14, 2016, 09:10:53 PM by Bluechip »

Offline crueby

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2016, 09:15:41 PM »
Quaint variation which, for reasons unknown   :Lol: , never really caught on ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Horse_locomotive

Dave

Would have been a fun one to watch. I wonder if it left piles of swarf behind it...!
Guess you could adapt the same thing to poling a small boat along too. Steam powered venetian gondola?

Offline mklotz

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2016, 09:38:31 PM »

Would have been a fun one to watch. I wonder if it left piles of swarf behind it...!
Guess you could adapt the same thing to poling a small boat along too. Steam powered venetian gondola?

Venetian gondolas are rowed, not poled.  Didn't Abraham Lincoln get a patent for a device to "walk" a boat across sandbars or similar low obstructions?
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Offline crueby

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2016, 11:54:05 PM »

Would have been a fun one to watch. I wonder if it left piles of swarf behind it...!
Guess you could adapt the same thing to poling a small boat along too. Steam powered venetian gondola?

Venetian gondolas are rowed, not poled.  Didn't Abraham Lincoln get a patent for a device to "walk" a boat across sandbars or similar low obstructions?

You are right, a sculling oar off the stern. I was thinking of the smaller punts that are poled in shallower rivers.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #6 on: October 15, 2016, 07:16:57 PM »
After looking at about a thousand different walking beam designs on the internet, I found one which is very interesting, driven by a rolling cam at each end. The trick part is that both cams have to rotate  together at the same speed of rotation. This could have been accomplished with a really small chain drive between the shafts, but I chose to use a couple of pairs of miter gears, simply because they were readily accessible at the local R.C. shop. I have shown the accumulating ramp at the discharge end, but I haven't shown the magazine feeder at the load end yet. as an indicator of size, the dark blue pieces being conveyed are 3/8" diameter x 3" long.

Offline crueby

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2016, 07:52:03 PM »
Brian, to make it a continuous feed like the marble elevator, if the base was wide enough so the logs could roll back down a ramp to the start end, then another walking beam conveyor at an angle could bring them back up to the first hopper again...

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #8 on: October 15, 2016, 07:53:18 PM »
And a few overall dimensions---

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #9 on: October 15, 2016, 07:55:24 PM »
Brian, to make it a continuous feed like the marble elevator, if the base was wide enough so the logs could roll back down a ramp to the start end, then another walking beam conveyor at an angle could bring them back up to the first hopper again...
Yes, I've actually thought of that. However, that is more work at one time than I care to take on. However, this is a somewhat "modular" design, in that more can always be added to it at a later date.

Offline Noitoen

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #10 on: October 15, 2016, 08:59:54 PM »
I used to service a fish hook factory who's machines worked on this principal. A single motor operated the whole machine and starting with straight pieces of wire, the conveyor moved to different stations to gradually form the hook. Pure mechanical operation with cams and levers with a single electric part, the motor. These machines were of their own design and were never patented to protect them. Since you have to submit the working principle of the invention to patent, it is easier to keep the machines behind closed doors to protect them.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2016, 04:04:31 PM »
Any time I buy a set of miter gears, and they come pre packaged with no engineering information, the formulae for calculating the centers and offsets of the shafts is a trick. It is partly math, partly experience, and partly luck. And then of course, when you have figured it out, you still aren't certain until you make up a test block with the holes for the shafts which the gears are mounted on to see whether you had it right or not. I must have got it right this time, because they mesh very nicely with no binding. And another bit of gear trivia---Miter gears are always used on shafts which are at 90 degrees to each other. If the shafts are at some other angle, then the gears are known as "bevel gears" and have an angular number attached to the part number.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2016, 04:07:39 PM »
Having a rather crazy morning here. I haven't had any "real" work since June. Now two customers have called and both want me "right now"!!! I will try and work for both of them, just stagger my hours so they both get coverage. I phoned my metal supplier and ordered everything I would need to build the walking beam. That came to $80.00--far more than I anticipated. If I go in there and buy one piece of metal at a time, they don't charge any shop labour. If I order two or three things at once, then they charge me the shops labour rate for pulling and cutting the stock. It probably works out to be fairly inexpensive over a years time, but to swallow $80 all in one lump seems like a lot. I have decided to make this part first. There will be a right hand and a left hand version. Don't bother to copy or save this drawing, as there will probably be changes as the job progresses. I am making these pieces first, because it is much easier to make a cam on the lathe to fit the 2.000" diameter holes than it is to machine the cams first and then try to bore to an accurate enough size for a good rolling fit.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2016, 08:26:26 PM »
I picked up my material, and decided that I would start work on this project today. This first piece is actually two pieces, the right and left hand side walking beams. Since the two pieces have to be identical, I cut a 36" length in half, which gives me an inch to be trimmed off both ends, as the finished walking beam is 16" long. I drilled and tapped one plate and drilled close fitting clearance holes in the other, for #8-32 shcs. This lets me bolt the two plates together, and all of the machining will be done (except counterboring for bolt heads) while the two plates are together. This should give me a better chance at having two identical finished plates than if I machined them separately. You can see that I have laid out the profile and all the holes in the plate. I will use the digital readouts on my mill when I go to drill the holes----the layout dye is cheap, and it lets me know if I'm drilling in the right place. I trust the readouts, but it is kind of like wearing a belt and suspenders too.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Walking Beam Conveyor
« Reply #14 on: October 19, 2016, 12:09:15 AM »
And that my friends, is a lot of holes!! I finally have a bit of "real" engineering work, so progress will slow a bit. I have bored the holes to about .005" undersize. The finish I get on bored holes is not spectacular, so by the time I get the inside of the two 2" holes smoothed out a bit, I will be very close to the finished diameter. Now I see a lot of 'sawing and milling' in my immediate future.

 

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