A motorized drive roller conveyor includes an upstream zone and a downstream zone, with each zone having a drive roller, an idler roller that is driven by the drive roller, and a sensor. The upstream zone and the downstream zone are controlled by a card, which measures a gap between a first item on the conveyor and a second item on the conveyor by beginning a counter when a trailing edge of the first item passes the sensor of the upstream zone and stopping the counter when a leading edge of the second item passes the sensor of the upstream zone to generate a counter value. If the first item is stopped in the downstream zone, the card of the upstream zone causes the drive roller of the upstream zone to advance the second item into the downstream zone for a distance derived from the counter value before stopping the transportation of the second item.

To make it possible to operate a conveyor installation (1) in the form of a long stator linear motor in a simple manner, a first trigger point (Tx) is defined in at least one first position (Px) on the conveying track (2) and a first program code (Fx) which can be executed in the system controller (6) and with which a transport unit (TEn) is moved along a track section of the conveying track (2) in accordance with a defined movement profile is assigned to the first trigger point (Tx), and this program code (Fx) is executed for each transport unit (TEn) that reaches the first trigger point (Tx).

A board conveyance device and conveyance belt inspection method that enable easy detection of a problem with conveyance belts. The board conveyance device includes: endless conveyance belts on which is set a conveyance path for conveying a board; a board sensor configured to detect the presence of the board at a specified detection position on the conveyance path; and a control section configured to, in a case in which the board is not being conveyed on the conveyance path, move the conveyance belts and determine a problem with the conveyance belts based on a detection result of the board sensor.

The disclosure provides a material handling method and system. The method includes: obtaining a carrying load of at least two carrying devices on a current production line in a present working period; adjusting a carrying area of at least two carrying devices according to the carrying load, and/or, adjusting the carrying priority level of the sharing carrying sub-area and the independent carrying sub-area of at least two carrying devices according to the carrying load. Each carrying area of one carrying device comprises a sharing carrying sub-area and an independent carrying sub-area.

A transport vehicle controller causes a travel speed of the corresponding one of the plurality of article transport vehicles to which the transport vehicle controller is provided to be reduced based on position information of corresponding one of the plurality of article transport vehicles to which the transport vehicle controller is provided and the position information on another of the plurality of article transport vehicles if a separation distance between the corresponding one of the plurality of article transport vehicles to which the transport vehicle controller is provided and the another of the plurality of article transport vehicles is less than, or equal to, a set separation distance.

A sorting system conveys a heterogeneous mixture of material pieces past an XRF system and a vision system. A classification of a material piece is changed to a high copper content aluminum alloy when the XRF system classifies the material piece as a low copper content aluminum alloy and the vision system determines that the material piece is a thin strip material piece. The reclassified material piece is then sorted accordingly.

When x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy is utilized to classify materials transported on a moving conveyor belt, there is the possibility of the x-ray beam only partially irradiating the material piece, which can result in the capture of an inaccurate XRF spectrum needed to classify the material piece. This can lead to an improper (erroneous) classification and resultant sortation of material pieces (e.g., aluminum alloys). In a material handling system, the area of the intersections between the x-ray beam spots from an x-ray fluorescence system and the material pieces are measured and correspondingly used to correct the measured XRF spectrum associated with each material piece. The material pieces can then be sorted according to the corrected XRF spectrum.

A typing tunnel off-loading and sorting system includes an off-loading conveyor, cameras and photoelectric eye. The overhead cameras detect the item size and whether it is cubic in nature and type and size of its footprint. An in-line slide sorter having alternating conveyor rollers and pop-up belts pass through to, or divert articles from, a downstream conveyor. The vision based system may also be used to detect space between articles and insert articles in the unoccupied space.

Embodiments provide methods, systems, and apparatuses for loading workpieces in a flow direction into the spaced apart lugs on a lugged conveyor with the workpieces oriented transverse to the flow direction. The lug loader includes an array of pairs of endless conveyors configured to convey workpieces toward a lugged conveyor. The first and second endless conveyors of each pair are spaced laterally apart across the flow direction and aligned substantially in the flow direction. The array can form a continuous or discontinuous transport surface. Some pairs of endless conveyors in the array may overlap one or more other pairs of endless conveyors in the array. At least one pair of endless conveyors in the array may include two or more endless conveyors that are independently driven at different speeds and/or in different directions to de-skew a workpiece.

Embodiments of a system and method for sorting and delivering articles in a processing facility based on image data are described. Image processing results such as rotation notation information may be included in or with an image to facilitate downstream processing such as when the routing information cannot be extracted from the image using an unattended system and the image is passed to an attended image processing system. The rotation notation information may be used to dynamically adjust the image before presenting the image via the attended image processing system.