Conveyor belt tracking

--If you can crown the rollers a bit it will self-center...

Tracking a belt is going to depend on the belt material, construction of the belt and driven rollers on the system.

Belts made of steel or other ridgid material will track away from the "high side" of an adjustable roller.

Belts made of rubber or other "grippy" material will track towards the high spot.

Trial and errror get mixed in if the drive or driven roller(s) are lagged or coated with friction material, typically a single layer wrapping of rubber sheeting or, in some cases, the same material as the C/V belt itself.

Crowned rollers will track towards center 80% of the time. Naturally what ever type of belt YOU are using will be in the 20% catagory... ;-)

Belts with steel cable molded in (very heavy capacity rubber type belting) seem to follow their own paths in life. Again, trial and error...lots of friction but almost no stretch.

If this belt is such a pain in the tail to track you may want to rethink the C/V's design and install a belt with a v-belt type tracking runner vulcanized to the inner face of the belt. This will entail 100% roller replacement with grooved rollers. Tracking, within reason, becomes a moot point.

It only took two hours to learn to track this belt. First I guessed it would run to the tight side. I was wrong, this belt runs to the loose (short) side of the nose. Then it took a couple more trys to get it to run in the middle.

I left myself this note so I can look it up on google next time. My apple packing line has seven belts and at least one needs tracking adjustment every year.

Karl