Education > Product Information > PTFE Belting > How to Track and Drive

Support, Driving, Tensions and Guiding

The excellent dimensional stability of our PTFE and silicone belt materials make it possible to use simple systems for support, tensioning, driving and guiding. To receive advice for your particular application you should contact an experienced AFC customer service representative.

Supporting

Steel slider beds, chevrons or rollers are appropriate choices to support our belts.

Tensioning

A Fluon coated belt should have as little tension applied to it as possible. How little? Only enough to carry the customer’s product along the conveyor or through his oven! Over tensioning the belt will diminish its useful life.

Guiding and Tracking

Tracking is essential to belt performance. External, electrical or mechanical systems are the best choice to optimize belt life and performance.

Belts fabricated by AFC can be manufactured with dot guides, grommets or silicone guide strip on one or both edges. The guide strip helps to assure accurate tracking and promotes enhanced belt performance. The dot and silicone guides are designed to fit into the grooves cut into pulleys.

Automatic belt tracking system for Fluon coated belting

The tracking of Fluon coated belting is a constant problem. At what point do we recommend an automatic belt tracker? The majority of the time, the size and type of the belt will determine if an automatic tracker is needed. Belts that run in excess of 15fpm may also warrant automatic tracking.

Solid Coated Belts:

We recommend an automatic tracker on all solid coated Fluon belting over 24” in width and 30’ in length. Only flat pulleys should be used on solid coated belting. Never use crowned pulleys on solid coated belts, as the material will develop a center crease down the entire length of the belt. This is due to the fact that the belt cannot conform to the crown. Remember trying to track a solid coated Fluon belt is like trying to track a pane of glass, it doesn’t want to distort and will break!

Fluon Coated Mesh Belts:

Trapezoidal crowned pulleys should be used on all Fluon coated mesh belting. A trapezoidal crowned pulley has the center 2/3 of the pulley flat and the edges are crowned of at the rate of 1/16” per foot. Both the drive and tail pulleys should have trapezoidal crowns. In addition to the trapezoidal crowned pulleys on our mesh belting over 48” in width and 60’ in length an automatic tracker should be used. The splice should not be trimmed at an angle when using automatic tracking as the belt sensor tracks (rides) along the edge of the belt.

Short, Wide Belts:

Automatic tracking systems should also be used on all wide short length belts. These are belts where the length and width are almost the same. Short, wide belts are very difficult to track whether they are conventional or Fluon coated conveyor belts.

Driving Fluon Belts:

A word about driving Fluon coated belts. A belt should be pulled through the oven or conveyor, never pushed. A smooth metal pulley and a slippery Fluon coated belt is a bad combination. The more tension you apply to the Fluon belt to get it to drive, the more slippery the Fluon surface becomes. To overcome this, the drive pulley must be lagged or covered with an EPDM or similar rubber that will help grip the slippery surface of the Fluon. In higher temperature applications, where the belt doesn’t have enough time to cool down before it contacts the drive roller, a silicone rubber lagging is necessary. The lagging or covering material should have shore hardness in the range of 30-50.