Key Technology introduces Horizon™, a new horizontal motion conveyor that features a unique maintenance-free mechanical drive. Offering gentle, quiet, and sanitary horizontal motion conveying, Horizon is ideal for many fragile, seasoned, coated, and frozen food products. Its drive is powerful and efficient, capable of moving product at speeds up to 42 feet (13 meters) per minute on a single continuous conveyor up to 100 feet (30 meters) long.
“With the addition of Horizon, Key now offers a one stop solution, providing food processors a wide range of vibratory and horizontal motion conveyors that satisfy nearly every conveying need,” said Steve Johnson, Product Marketing Manager at Key Technology. “With Key’s comprehensive material handling product line, engineering expertise, and line integration services, we can create the ideal conveying system anywhere in a processing line from raw product receiving to packaging distribution.”
Key designed Horizon with a mechanical drive that maximizes reliability and offers long equipment life with minimal maintenance. The lube-for-life drive, which is backed by Key’s industry-leading five-year warranty, provides trouble free operation and can be used with different pans to keep running year after year, delivering a low cost of ownership.
Horizon maximizes product quality with gentle handling and clean operation. Minimal vertical product acceleration reduces breakage and seasoning loss, making Horizon the preferred choice for conveying delicate, coated, dusty, or noisy products. The horizontal motion produces a continuous self-cleaning action, preventing buildup of coatings, oils, or seasonings as product slides along the pan. The sliding action also prevents mixing and size separation of the product. The entire conveyor system, including the drive, is in motion, which reduces the chance of buildup that can accumulate on stationary components. Limited flat surfaces, stainless steel construction, and wipe down friendly design improve sanitation.
Horizon’s lightweight drive is strong and efficient, powering more conveyor than many other horizontal motion drives. Available in two sizes to minimize power consumption, the larger drive can convey product continuously up to 100 feet (30 meters). The drive is refined to maximize horizontal drive forces and limit transmitted vibration, an indication of wasted energy. Horizon can be custom designed in widths from 12 to 60 inches (305 to 1524 mm) to meet the exact needs of each customer. Select standard models are available with short delivery lead-times.
The versatile Horizon can be mounted to the floor or other machinery or suspended from the ceiling. The drive can be mounted anywhere along the conveyor pan, including underneath or behind to “push” the conveyor or in front to “pull” the conveyor. Key can design Horizon with a variety of custom and standard slide gates, rotary gates, and proportional gates as well as various bias, flared, and conical discharges to transfer products smoothly. The system can be modified in the field with minimal engineering required, allowing Key to alter the conveyor length as well as gates and discharges as the customer’s needs change, thereby increasing the value of the machine.
Horizon moves product at rates up to 42 feet (13 meters) per minute. Product flow rates and flow direction can both be controlled, maximizing the flexibility of the system to meet a broader array of customer requirements. Reversing product flow allows Horizon to feed two different directions from one system and enables the conveyor to be used for storage as well as distribution.
Used alone or in combination with Key’s Iso-Flo® and Impulse™ vibratory conveyors, Horizon rounds out Key’s Smart Shaker® conveying suite, providing customers the most complete range of conveyor technologies from one manufacturer.