DE9419568U1 - Floor conveyor system with energy storage vehicles - Google Patents

Description

Description of the utility model application

Title: Industrial conveyor system with energy storage vehicles

Application area: Conveyor technology

Applicant: Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Viktor Rosenau

Johannes-Schuster-Weg 14, 76185 Karlsruhe

It is known that the operating costs of industrial trucks equipped with battery-powered vehicles are very high, that these systems are prone to failure, that in the event of a failure the deployment of very highly qualified personnel is often required, and that the disposal of the heavy, bulky batteries is a major problem.

The weight of the batteries is usually higher than the weight of the payload, which results in a very low efficiency of the system. More energy is used to "drive" the heavy, expensive and environmentally harmful batteries than to transport the payload.

Systems with industrial vehicles that are moved by mechanical towing devices are free of all these disadvantages.

However, these systems have the disadvantage that the towing devices (e.g. ropes or chains) must be laid along the conveyor route either in recesses in the floor or on the ceiling above the conveyor route and must be equipped with drives, tensioning stations, deflection devices, switches, etc. The towing devices themselves must be carried along the entire route. This is accomplished almost exclusively by pairs of rollers, which are attached to the towing devices at short intervals. The whole thing requires high investments even in relatively inexpensive cases.

In most cases it is not possible to relocate the towing equipment without any problems.

Setting up pits for the relatively voluminous drive and tensioning stations, for the deflection devices and switches, as well as setting up the channel for the drag agent along the conveyor route is associated with major problems when laying the drag agent in the ground, such as reconstruction of the building and its foundations. The result: very high investment costs and long construction times.

Laying the towing equipment for industrial vehicles above their route (on the ceiling) is also costly and is rarely practiced due to space constraints.

Attempts to equip industrial vehicles with relatively simple individual electric drives and to supply the power required for the drive via conductor lines have not yet led to any significant breakthrough.

Laying the conductor line above the route (as with trams) is rarely practiced for industrial trucks in buildings due to space constraints.

If the conductor line is laid in the floor, you will have to deal with constant power supply failures due to circuit interruptions at the sliding contacts due to soiling of the floor and the associated disruptions. The problem is made worse by the fact that, for safety reasons, only a very low voltage can be used when laying the conductor line in the floor. The result: high current, which requires good contact. In reality, however, you are dealing with the opposite (poor contact).

because keeping the conductor rail channel clean in real industrial conditions is virtually impossible, and if it is, it is associated with increased operating costs.

—5—

In the proposed system, the problem of disruptions due to power supply interruptions is solved by the fact that the vehicles (1, Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) (equipped with individual electric drives) are additionally equipped with energy storage units (5), so that the points on the route at which the power supply circuit is interrupted due to contamination of the conductor line (3) can be overcome by energy from the storage unit (5).

Modern electrical engineering offers the possibility of building energy storage devices with low weight and small volume at acceptable costs, with the help of which industrial trucks with a weight typical for industrial trucks could overcome track sections of e.g. 2m (or more) without an external "power supply" and without a significant reduction in travel speed.

Furthermore, modern electrical engineering offers the possibility of building simple circuits with the help of which the generation of sparks when contacts are broken (in this case due to dirt) can be suppressed to a large extent, so that the conductor line and the current collector do not suffer any significant wear due to electrical erosion (caused by sparks).

The conductor line duct (7), which can also serve as a guide duct for the vehicle, can be designed to be very compact, so that only a small groove needs to be milled out in the floor to lay the duct. In addition, the duct can be laid on the floor (without sinking) or above the floor in parts of the route where this is permitted.

In this case, the term "floor" is to be understood in the conveying sense: It means that it is a conveyor system with vehicles (and not a roller conveyor) in which the wheels (8) attached to the vehicle (1) and supporting the vehicle roll on a surface (4 or 10) under the vehicle (1) and not above the vehicle (as with overhead conveyors, etc.).

This surface can be the floor (4) directly or with a substructure for the roadway, a mezzanine floor in the building, a protective grating walkway (Fig. 2) etc., even if the latter are built suspended from the ceiling and/or provided with an additional substructure (9).

End of description

Claims (7)

Protection claims 1. Floor conveyor system in which the individual vehicles (1) are driven by electric motors (2) and steered mechanically or electromechanically and in which the power supply of the drive motors is provided via conductor lines (3) laid in the floor or on the floor, whereby "floor" in the conveying technology sense is to be understood as the floor (4) or substructure (9) on which the conveyor vehicles travel, characterized in that each vehicle is equipped with an energy storage device (5), the energy supply of which is used to supply the drive motor (or drive motors) and other energy consumers on the vehicle when the energy supply via the contact line is interrupted (e.g. due to contamination of the sliding contacts (6) on the contact line). The energy supply of this storage device is refilled when the energy supply from the contact line is intact. 2. Conveyor system according to claim 1, characterized in that an electrical capacitor (or capacitor bank) serves as the energy storage device (5). 3. Conveyor system according to claim 2, characterized in that the capacitor is an electrolytic capacitor (or an electrolytic capacitor battery). 4. Conveyor system according to the above claims, characterized in that the holder of the conductor lines (conductor line channel 7) is used for the mechanical guidance of the vehicles. 5. Conveyor system according to the above claims, characterized in that the conductor line duct is laid so that its upper edge is flush (B) with the surface of the floor or lower than the surface of the floor. 6. Conveyor system according to the above claims, characterized in that the conductor line duct is laid on the entire route or only partially on the floor (without sinking) or above the floor. 7. Conveyor system according to the above claims, characterized in that the wheels (8) of the vehicles do not run directly on the ground, but on profiles (10) which serve as running surfaces for the wheels or guide profiles.