Remcon installed a small e-sort system and built most of what surrounds the optical sorting equipment: the high-speed conveyor and containment hood, the support structure carrying them, the screw conveyor and vibratory feeder that feed the sorter, and the air supply plumbing and compressor the sorting equipment runs on.
The Problem: A Sorter Ships as a Machine, Not as a Line
Sensor-based sorting equipment arrives as a machine with an electrical supply and a compressed air supply to satisfy. It does not arrive with the belt that presents material to it, the structure that holds it at working height, the stairs a technician climbs to clean the optics, the feed equipment that meters material into it, or the compressed air its ejection valves run on. Each is a separate scope, and on most jobs a separate vendor.
On this small e-sort system, Remcon installed the equipment and built most of what sits on either side of the sorting machine itself.
What Remcon Built and Installed
- The high-speed conveyor and containment hood that present material to the optical sorting equipment.
- The support structure carrying that conveyor, with a maintenance platform and stairs.
- The screw conveyor and vibratory feeder feeding the optical sorting equipment.
- Installation of all the equipment on the system, including machinery Remcon did not build.
- The air supply plumbing and compressor equipment the optical sorting equipment required.
Remcon does not build optical sorters. It builds and installs what an optical sorter needs on either side of it.
What the High-Speed Conveyor Has to Do
A sorter's rated throughput assumes material arrives at a steady rate, spread across the belt, close to a single layer, with pieces separated from each other. The belt immediately ahead of the sorter is what produces that condition. It runs faster than the belt feeding it, so each item accelerates away from the one behind it and the spacing grows roughly in proportion to the ratio of the two speeds. That is why it is a high-speed conveyor and not another feed belt. Our guide on optical sorter feed presentation works through the mechanism.
Speed has a ceiling of its own. Trade guidance on preparing material for sensor-based sorting puts the bare-belt limit at roughly 550 to 600 feet per minute, the speed at which light sheet paper and film start to fly up and drift. Once material stops travelling where the belt says it is, the sorter is aiming at a prediction that is already wrong. That same guidance answers it with a wind tunnel over the acceleration conveyor, moving air along the belt at belt speed to hold light items down. Remcon builds the containment hood on this class of conveyor, and what a given hood is asked to do is drawn against the material and the machine it feeds.
Remcon began supplying conveyors for computerized optical sorting systems in 1998 and has built more than 150 high-speed optical sorting conveyors since. Across our production, belt speeds run from 60 feet per minute at the slow end up to 900 on the fastest acceleration conveyors, with 1,200 the fastest belt we have built. Belt widths run from 12 to 72 inches as standard, and up to 96 inches on OEM builds.
Running a wide belt fast also puts weight on the splice, because a mechanical joint is a tracking problem and a catch point at speed. Remcon hot vulcanizes or cold bonds belts endlessly using a process developed for high-speed optical sorting conveyors up to 112 inches wide.
Feeding the Sorter: Screw Conveyor and Vibratory Feeder
Both machines in the feed path ahead of the sorting equipment were part of the same scope, and that matters more than it sounds. A high-speed belt cannot singulate material that arrives in slugs; it can only carry the slug past the sensor faster. What the belt spreads out, something upstream first has to meter.
A vibratory feeder is the machine that does the metering. It meters bulk material at a controlled rate by vibrating a steel pan: each stroke throws the load slightly forward, so the load walks toward the discharge in a steady, even layer and the feed rate follows the drive setting. Surging piles go in, controlled flow comes out. The screw conveyor ahead of the sorting equipment was part of the same scope.
Remcon does not manufacture vibratory feeders. We select and source them from established manufacturers and build everything around them — the hopper above, the frame under, the transition chute at the discharge, and the conveyors that feed and receive.
The Structure, the Platform, and the Stairs
The conveyor and the sorting equipment sit on a support structure Remcon designed and built, with a maintenance platform and stairs. Equipment mounted overhead is otherwise reached only with some kind of elevated lift or work platform, and often the area below is too restricted to get any type of lift equipment into the right location. Inevitably that leads to neglected machinery and costly repairs, which is the argument for permanent access instead of borrowed access.
Our platforms and catwalks are designed to custom-fit existing structures and machinery, which is exactly what an access structure around a sorter has to do. Decking is specified per location — diamond tread floor plate where stringy material like shredded paper has to be swept up, expanded metal or safety grating where debris and water should fall through. Guardrail drops into sockets and is freestanding once seated, so sections come out for maintenance without a sledgehammer.
The Air Side
A sensor-based sorter classifies material piece by piece, then acts on it with a bank of precisely timed air jets at the discharge. No air, no sort. Remcon installed the air supply plumbing and the compressor equipment the optical sorting equipment required. It is not conveyor work, but it is what the sorting equipment runs on.
The same scope came back at the other end of a machine's life. Remcon was later hired to relocate an e-sort system it had partially built and installed a few years earlier, from Illinois to Michigan — labelling and dismantling the air compressor piping and electrical conduit along with the machinery and platform structure, then reconfiguring the compressor and air lines supplying the optical sorter at the new plant. That job is on our system reconfiguration and moving page.
What This Means for Your Project
- List what the sorter does not include before you sign. Feed belt, acceleration belt and hood, support structure, access, feed metering, compressed air, chutework. Those line items decide whether it performs to its rating.
- Fix presentation before you spec a bigger machine. If material reaches the sorter in waves, a faster sorter inherits the same waves.
- One vendor across the belt, the structure, the feed, and the air means one place to go when presentation is wrong, instead of three each pointing at the next.
- Everything is built to order. Belt width, speed, hood geometry, and structure are matched to your building and your material stream, not to a catalog page.
- Installation is ours. Crews of two to four install nationwide, small enough to work in plants that have to keep running.
If you are integrating optical sorting equipment into an existing plant, or you own a sorter that is not hitting its numbers, tell us what the machine is, what feeds it, and what the building will allow. See how a full turn-key conveyor system comes together.
Optical Sorting System Integration FAQ
Will Remcon build the conveyor and hood for an optical sorter made by someone else?
Yes. That is the normal arrangement. Remcon does not manufacture optical sorting equipment; it builds the high-speed conveyor, the containment hood, the support structure, and the feed and take-away conveyors around whichever sorting machine you have chosen. Remcon has built more than 150 high-speed optical sorting conveyors since 1998, and has been integrating other manufacturers' equipment into its systems for far longer than that.
Does Remcon install the compressed air system for an optical sorter?
It has. On this e-sort system Remcon installed the air supply plumbing and the compressor equipment the optical sorting equipment required, along with all of the machinery. On a later relocation of an e-sort system Remcon had partially built, the crew dismantled the air compressor piping and electrical conduit, then reconfigured the compressor and air lines supplying the sorter at the new plant. Tell us what is in scope and we will tell you what we can carry.
Does Remcon manufacture the vibratory feeder that meters material into the sorter?
No. Remcon selects and sources vibratory feeders from established manufacturers, then designs and builds everything around them: the hopper above the pan, the support frame under it, the transition chute at the discharge, and the infeed and outfeed conveyors that tie it into the line. On this system, that feed equipment and the sorter's high-speed conveyor were part of one scope.
Why does the conveyor ahead of an optical sorter have to run so fast?
Because a sorter classifies and ejects material piece by piece, and it needs gaps between pieces to do that. Running the belt ahead of the sorter faster than the belt feeding it accelerates each item away from the one behind it, so the spacing grows roughly in proportion to the ratio of the two belt speeds. A dense, slow, touching stream goes in and a fast, thin, gapped one comes out. The containment hood is what keeps light material from lifting off the belt once it is moving at that speed.