Objective: Remove carry-back to eliminate housekeeping and clean-up requirements while improving employee safety to reduce injury risks and improve belt tracking issues.

Challenge: Installing the primary belt cleaner on the head pulley to remove the carry-back was relatively straightforward, with no major adjustments required. The installation of the secondary belt cleaner was a bit more challenging since it needed to be located further away than usual from the head pulley due to the conveyor’s snub pulley. The conveyor had a double truss system which would require us to install the unit in a “pass thru” style. A small chute extension was also needed on conveyor #2 to capture the removed material from the secondary to eliminate the clean-up requirements that existed on the #1 system due to the snub pulley.

Recommendations/Solution: After a complete conveyor system survey at their sister plant, we met with
their group to discuss our findings. They shared their data on man hours spent for clean-up, safety concerns
and maintenance requirements to operate. Locations, equipment maintenance access and other factors were
all taken into consideration. Due to the configuration of the head pulley diameter and the possibility of a
mechanical splice, we recommended the installation of ASGCO^®’s Skalper^® with E-Z Torque^® primary belt
cleaning system to remove the carry-back. Installation of the Razor-Back^® Secondary after the snub pulley
and prior to the belt leaving the surface grade and going into the pit would greatly reduce the man hours spent
on cleanup while reducing the risk of injury as well as improving housekeeping. Since a new sister plant was
about to begin operations using the same conveyor setup, they could compare the results at this facility and
apply them to the sister plant.

Results: Since these were new conveyor systems, there were no issues with the location or the installation
of the belt cleaners. The initial startups were trouble-free. The customer commented that access
for maintenance, when needed, will now be much easier due to the input we received during our earlier
discussions and the conveyor surveys that were done. Data will now be kept to compare the performance
and results with their sister plant.