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In the aviation industry, high availability is crucial - both in the air and for logistics services on the ground. With departures and arrivals occurring minute by minute and
hundreds of baggage items per aircraft, any breakdown of the conveyor system can lead to substantial delays in air traffic flows. This means that all the critical elements have to
meet extremely high standards. Yet costs cannot be allowed to escalate. This calls for a highly available yet cost-saving, lightweight form of construction. The ETL conveyor
system developed by FKI Logistex ticks all these boxes. It is used for transporting the kind of plastic totes that are required to convey and sort non-standard, unstable baggage
like backpacks and holdalls.
Drum motors are particularly suitable for driving lightweight conveyor segments, since it too is "reduced to the max" - with all drive components like motor, casing
and conveyor rollers combined into one unit that requires no complicated, flange-mounted lateral components. Nor is any mechanical tension required to hold the belts in
place.
The rigorous selection process of FKI Logistex
As the ETL conveyor system of FKI has to perform an extremely high number of sequential starts and stops per day and is required to offer long-term availability for more than 10
years, the system developers looked for motors that would withstand extremely high demands; they also carried out comprehensive market research. Ultimately this led to the
selection of belt drives produced by BDL. BDL was the only manufacturer able not only to deliver specified product lifetime data but also to supply specific and convincing
lifetime figures at the time. To do so, the Wassenberg drum motor specialists developed a comprehensive calculation program that allowed all relevant factors and ratios to be
calculated against various environmental parameters. This calculation system has since been used for many other drum motor sales in order to give customers reliable statements
about the expected availability of a certain drum motor deployed in a specific application. However, FKI Logistex did not stop there. The use of the drum motors was also simulated
on a test bench to check the accuracy of the calculations. The result was that the simulation clearly exceeded the specified lifetime of the motor.
At least 13 years of service life
At Madrid Airport, it has been calculated that the motors used, with 15 expected starts and stops per minute and a top speed of 0.5m/sec to 1m/sec, will have a service life of 13
to 16 years. BDL drum motors have been performing at this level since their installation without requiring any maintenance and/or servicing work. All of this has occurred without
a single motor breakdown and the associated need for replacement parts. "We don't even include them in our regular maintenance checks," says George Edward Kunhardt,
the Maintenance Manager for FKI Logistex in Spain.
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