Supporting American Made Manufacturing

For those looking to support American made manufacturing, you’ve come to the right place. Furnace Belt is a provider of conveyor belting solutions, but we’re also big supporters of the “Made in the USA” movement—and we’re not alone.

After celebrating October as National Manufacturing Month, we jumped in to celebrate November’s American Made Matters Day on Nov. 19. This event is hosted by the American Made Matters mission, anyone across the country can join in by making the commitment to purchase products that are made in the U.S. through the holiday shopping season. Buying goods made in our own company supports companies, industries, and the people who make them run. While all aspects of the economy can benefit, we’re pushing toward awareness for the manufacturing industry.

According to an American Made Matters press release, every dollar invested in American-made products pushes an additional $1.35 into the economy, which is astounding. Considering the manufacturing industry boasts some of the biggest contracts within the economy, making those investments creates a huge return—and a ripple effect.

For Furnace Belt, making our weaves and wires in the U.S. is crucial. Not only does this save money on shipping and many other costs, but it’s important to our business to invest in the industry and future generations of American manufacturers. We’re committed to building a solid future for the industry and economy, and if you’re looking for more information about our American made initiatives and products, check out our website.

The Importance of Conveyor Belt Weave Size

Balanced Weave Belting

In a previous blog, we discussed how conveyor belts are suited to each processing job—primarily emphasizing the importance of picking the correct weave material. Choosing the incorrect material can damage the product, regardless of whether it is food, steel, or plastic, but we want to highlight something equally as important: weave size.

At Furnace Belt, we research our customers’ products, calculate the best fit, and present our findings. Product size isn’t the standard issue for the products on our belts because we offer a plenty of wire belting solutions, some with more open weaves and some with closed weaves. For example, if the parts on the conveyor belts are small screws, it wouldn’t be wise to use a heavy-duty flat wire belting because the product would fall through… one of our round wire beltings might be more appropriate.

But it’s not just about the size of the weave—we also calculate how the different air flow affects the product and how the belt’s heat absorption factors in. We don’t want to over- or under-compensate, so we make very precise measurements.

Regardless of what you’re manufacturing, our range of conveyor belts are custom crafted for every application, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 1-800-354-7213 or check out our website for more information.

How the Moving Assembly Line Revolutionized the Conveyor Belt

At the beginning of the 20th century, the car's business model wasn't completely effective. Most cars were considered a luxury many could not afford to spend the time or money on.  In order to create "a motor car for the great multitude," Henry Ford realized new innovations were necessary—and so the assembly line was born.

Utilizing four principles (interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort), the factories began mass produce car parts. To increase workflow, the conveyor belt, a product developed a few years prior was incorporated into production. This process revolutionized the automotive industry and sparked a new relationship between the warehouse and conveyor belting.

Now, in the 100th anniversary year of the moving assembly line, it's safe to say this process put the world on wheels. Car and Driver's piece on the development of this process highlights how the production numbers greatly increased as prices went down—and eventually, the world was on the road.


The conveyor belt assembly line is used in a number of industries, from mining to food processing. As manufacturers of conveyor belting and conveyor belt solutions, we’re proud to work in an industry that has caused so much growth, employment and innovation. For more information on our wire belting and other products, check out our website.

How Conveyor Belts Are Suited to Each Food Processing Job

Conveyor belts and the food industry have a great relationship. It seems whenever a news station or television show gets access to a factory, hundreds of products zoom through production on a lightning-fast conveyor belt. Regardless of whether a company is producing boxes of crackers or moving fruit down a line, there’s a conveyor belt for every job.

The important part of this process is to tailor each specific belt to the product. Although it doesn’t always matter what weave is used, the metal is key. Our belts are available in carbon, galvanized, and stainless steel, and each is tailored to the specific food product and temperature.

For example, 304 stainless steel—one of the most versatile and popular forms of stainless steel—is standard for frozen foods. Surprisingly, on the other end of the temperature spectrum, most food applications in frying also use the 304 grade. This specific grade is made up of classic 18/8 stainless steel, and it’s the most common among manufacturers because it can be readily formed and has superior welding and forming capabilities.

Say a company made the mistake of using an incorrect material for their product, the processed food could be compromised and the belt could have major corrosion issues. The mechanical properties in these belts are very delicate and suited to each customer’s need, which is why there’s no reason to look elsewhere—for a trusted source of conveyor belting, head over to our website.

How Can Conveyor Belts Increase Mining ROI?

Canada’s mining industry is strong. The Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange makeup 58 percent of the world’s public mining companies, and Canada ranks in the top five in producing nickel, platinum, aluminum, diamonds, and many other resources.

There’s always room for improvement. If your technique is slowing down the process, it doesn’t matter what minerals you’re mining or how well the industry itself is doing. Although there are many ways to mine a product, don’t you want to know the best way to add to existing capacities while increasing the return on investment?

Here’s an example of how to boost production: Say your company uses a slope—most are rectangular with a wide span for the floor and roof—to remove goods because drilling directly down isn’t an option. You notice it’s increasingly tedious to bring mined goods up to ground level, and you’re looking for a solution. This is where installing conveyor belts can help speed up production and increase the ROI as an end result. Conveyor systems are an easy-to-use, consistent way to raise production levels, and they allow workers to better inspect minerals as they head to the surface.

Check out this model of an underground mine with a conveyor system:

We at Furnace Belt have been working for almost four decades to offer the highest quality round-wire woven and flat metal belting for mining operations. In order to maintain a high level of mineral production and boost your company’s profit, we hope you’ll turn to us for all your custom conveyor belt needs.

Recognizing the Importance of Conveyor-Belt Safety

If you’ve ever seen the “I Love Lucy” famous candy factory scene, you know how fast-paced conveyor belts can move. Although it’s funny to watch Lucy and Ethel frantically shove chocolate in their faces to avoid getting fired, those aren’t practices most food processing companies would find acceptable. June is National Safety Month, so we are highlighting the importance of conveyor belt safety.

Ensuring safety for our employees and customers begins before work begins. All conveyor parts are assembled, stabilized, and tested. Safety features such as rails and netting are put in place to protect workers from objects that might accidentally fall off the belt.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration lays out the safety and health regulations for using conveyors, and here are a few key points:

• Systems must have a stopping mechanism at the operator’s station
• A warning signal must sound immediately before starting up the machine
• Emergency stop switches should not allow the conveyor to start again until the stop has been reset to an “on” position
• Each crossover, aisle, or passageway must be marked with a sign
• If machine isn’t suitable for use, a clear “Do Not Operate” tag must be visible

Furnace Belt makes safety a priority, and we encourage you to check out the video below to learn about the National Safety Council’s Journey to Safety Excellence:

Image courtesy of I Love Lucy's Facebook page

Mining Landfills Can Help Save the Environment

There seems to be endless benefits of recycling. The programs save money, energy, and trees. It generates 1.1 million in U.S. jobs, $236 billion sales annually, and $37 billion in salaries. The process reduces air and water pollutants and conserves natural resources. Most importantly, it keeps products out of landfills—but what will happen to the products already in landfills? That’s where landfill mining and reclamation comes in.

Landfill mining and reclamation is a process consisting of excavating and processing solid wastes that are currently in a landfill—in hopes of retrieving space, soil, and recyclable materials. The process, which dates back to the mid-1900s, aides in reorganizing landfills that are poorly operated or are not up to health codes.

Most landfills established prior to 1994 were closed off to seal the waste. In addition, many landfills were developed without linings to separate the landfill and original environment, meaning the waste can seep into the surrounding groundwater, harming land and unleashing legal liabilities.

Mining and reclamation begins by dividing the landfill content and excavating it onto different screens on a conveyor belt—large wastes are caught in the screen while soil falls through the small screen openings. Here is an example of a landfill mining process:

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This relatively new mining process helps bring the area to an environmental equilibrium, reduce the overall landfill’s size, and recover recyclables. Good candidates for landfill mining and reclamation processes are those where excavators can get an idea of how the landfill was created, the uses of potentially recovered materials, and the current condition of the waste.

A Brief History of Conveyor Belts and the World They Ushered in

Conveyor belts have a long history as an integral part of
production from the coal to the automotive industry.

No history of the last century, or of the current one, would be complete without a history of the industrial conveyor belt. While conveyor belts have been in service since at least the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in England (the first such belts were made from leather or canvas and served as flimsy, short-distance transportation systems for sacks of grain), the scale and scope of their application continued to expand. By the turn of the 20^th century, conveyor belts were being used to unload materials of significant weight – things like lumber and wooden shingles – from out of railcars in Northern cities such as Minneapolis. With the discovery of electric energy and the consequent automation of production that electricity enabled, it was only a matter of time (1919) before the first automated “roller” conveyor was used for automotive production by none other than Henry Ford.

By the mid 1920s, conveyor belts were a “boomtown” industry. The developed nations in Europe and North America all strove to produce goods at a faster and more accurate rate than their competitors. Those who dwelt in the realm of hand-crafted or conventionally assembled products were caught off-guard and left in the wake of the Modern Era. During the Second World War, assembly lines became something of a national icon in America, in that they were used to churn out seemingly endless numbers of tanks, trucks, jeeps, fighters, and bombers for the Allied war effort against the Axis powers. The city of Detroit, birthplace of the Ford Motor Co. and the automotive assembly line, earned itself the new distinction as the “Arsenal of Democracy” on account of the sheer quantities of armaments it produced for American and Allied armies.

The basic science was already well in place by 1945, but improvements throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s left conveyor systems with better means of control over their own operation. Utilizing a series of internally powered rollers and pulleys, these new generations of conveyor belts paved the way for the megalithic, high-efficiency conveyance systems we see in operation today. As it stands, the longest conveyor belt in the world is located in Western Sahara, where it is used in phosphate mining.

Even as the basic operating principals continue to hold, there are continuous tweaks, fine-tunings, and upgrades being made to conveyor systems and conveyor belt weaves alike by companies far and wide. We at Furnace Belt are a proud, long-standing player in an industrial sector that has become an iconic symbol of capital-I “Industry” itself. As the 21^st century rolls along, so shall we.

Our Work in Open-Pit Mining (Part One of a 2-Part Mining Series)

All components of a blast furnace must be
able to withstand extreme heat.

When one of the largest mining consortiums in the world contacted us to deliver conveyor belting for their mining operations on two different continents, we knew it would be a challenge, but we also knew we were up for it. What we didn’t know at the time was that the customized weaving we would eventually produce would prove to be our most ambitious industrial belt-work to date.

The client in question operates multiple nickel refineries in different locations across the globe. One essential part of the nickel refining process is the desulfurization of unrefined “ore” into nickel briquettes. Desulfurization allows for excess quantities of extraneous sulfur to be extracted from the raw material, leaving the nickel itself in a more “purified” state, as well as giving it greater properties of corrosion-resistance. Needless to say, desulfurization requires a blast furnace of epic proportions, particularly on the monumental scale by which most nickel processing operations get carried out in today’s hyper-industrialized world. Furthermore, and almost needless to say, the conveyor belting that carries the raw nickel into the blast furnace in order for it to be desulfurized needs to have two essential qualities: first, that it be capable of withstanding the tremendous heat of the blast furnace; and second, that it be capable of handling the tremendous turnover rate at which industrial-scale mining is conducted.

We set out to instill those two qualities in the work we performed on behalf of our client. What we ended up delivering to our customer was, in of itself, a work of art by the standards of our industry: a 60” wide conveyor belt capable of enduring immense blast furnace heat at a level commensurate with our client’s rigorous standards.

With our experience crafting high-performance equipment for major players in the mining industry, we have grown increasingly interested in the various types of mining operations that happen around the globe, and how our belt weaves can be adapted and/or customized for specific kinds of mining (open-pit mining, etc.) An upcoming blog will explore some of the various types of mining operations that require industrial-sized conveyor belts to insure their proper functioning. In the meantime, we are pleased to add that our client has been very happy with the work we delivered on their behalf. For further questions about how Furnace Belt can be of service to your given mining operation, please contact us today by phone or by email.

HSE Guidance Code Issued for Conveyor Workstations

The Health and Safety Executive Council (HSE), England’s foremost workplace health regulator, has issued guidelines for companies operating conveyor belts in the United Kingdom. These reports are drawing some appreciative buzz from “across the Pond” in North America. Primarily, the HSE has found that one of the leading causes of injury for those who sort through packages and/or components on a conveyor belt is musculoskeletal disorder.

Musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs for short, come in a nasty variety of types. While certain injuries to the human musculature or bone structure can transpire suddenly, others are slow-developing, harder to detect, and all the more insidious for being those things. Specifically, the awkward physical postures that conveyor line workers often have to assume during the course of sorting can lead to long-term problems such as spinal or back-related injuries, as well as deterioration of the arms and hip-joints. Repetitious twisting, leaning, and stooping, not to mention repeatedly lifting heavy objects from off a conveyor line can lead to all these things.

Workplace safety is something we all need to take seriously; manufacturers as much as plant operators. The need for conveyor belt sorters and workers to be seated at workstations whenever possible is something that can prevent a large number of these injuries from occurring over the long-term. At Furnace Belt, we can easily accommodate any workplace safety issues customers may have while designing our conveyor belts. A healthy worker is a productive and happy worker, it almost goes without saying. Let us know at Furnace Belt how we can help make your workplace healthier, safer, and more productive.