Industry
Baking
Application
Dough transport
Product
Alligator® Spiral Lace
Objective
Make equipment more sanitary
Make maintenance quicker and easier
Conveyor Detail
Polyurethane belting
Problem:
The endless belt at a bakery could not be removed, making it difficult to clean food product that migrated under the belt, polluting rollers and the conveyor interior. Attempts to use metal fasteners failed because the risk of product contamination was high and they fatigued quickly because of small transfer diameters.
Solution:
The Alligator® Spiral Lace system seemed like the perfect answer to the challenges faced by this bakery. Ideal for applications that have small pulleys, the Alligator Spiral Lace System features non-metallic, low-profile fasteners. Made from FDA-compliant material, the removable hinge-pin design also allows for easy cleaning of belts. Finally, the spiral loop is a continuous monofilament across the entire splice width, eliminating certain product contamination concerns present with segmented fasteners.
Result:
With Alligator Spiral Lacing, the belts are now opened and the conveyor can easily be cleaned. Prior to a hinged splice, cleaning required dismantling a portion of the conveyor structure to allow access to slip the belt off. This dismantling and reassembly process would take hours. With the Spiral Lace splice, it’s simply a matter of slipping out the hinge pin, cleaning the belt and system, and then reinserting the pin. The low profile spiral also transitions smoothly over the small pulley diameters of the conveying system, and the tight spiral loop virtually eliminates the potential for product contamination.