The Longest Conveyor Belt

http://www.conveyorbeltguide.com/LongestBelt.html

by NewHatMatt • 12 years ago

215 70 12 years ago

gboudrias• 12 years ago

Not much to add because the article doesn't say much, but I do love these feats of engineering. Those are pretty much 10 times as long as I thought they would be. Amazing.

alelefant• 12 years ago

The colors speak for themselves. ;)

It is amazing how long that is. My only experience with a belt was working at Walgreens on warehouse truck days. Even our 60 foot belt continually had product falling off of it. I wonder what kind of oversight is done to make sure the items stay on it.

guelo• 12 years ago

None, that's why you can see the phosphate spillage from space.

mc32• 12 years ago

I'm not sure, but I would guess they could be either have V-shaped x-section or have sag in the middle to avoid having the material fall off the edges.

AceJohnny2• 12 years ago

The coordinates listed for the single longest conveyer belt are a little bit off. Here's the start: https://goo.gl/maps/X2jg8

And here's the end: https://goo.gl/maps/n0wvJ

(is there a way to get coordinates out of the new Maps?)

And while I'm at it, a direct link for the longest combined conveyer belt: https://goo.gl/maps/3kz4s

Pity, no streetview :p

maxmcd• 12 years ago

Looks like a decimal version of the lat/lng are available in the urls of the links once clicked.

frewsxcv• 12 years ago

re: coordinates

Right click on map -> "What's here" -> look in the box under the search bar

Schwolop• 12 years ago

This reminds me of one Rio Tinto executive's dismissal of their $70M dollar purchase of a set of autonomous Komatsu haul trucks as "a very expensive reconfigurable conveyor belt".

patdennis• 12 years ago

For those of you who, like me, didn't know that autonomous mining trucks existed, here's a video of them in action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE

robmcm• 12 years ago

For those who have YouTube blocked at work: http://www.komatsu.com.au/AboutKomatsu/Technology/Pages/AHS....

gk1• 12 years ago

From the homepage:

"On 15th September 2013, the ConveyorBeltGuide has been online for 10 years."

Wow, that is some serious dedication. Assuming there are no ulterior motives--and I don't see evidence of any--it's wonderful to see someone so dedicated to sharing such intricate knowledge with anyone who's interested. And it's not abandoned, either; the disclaimer page notes that all videos on the site have been updated to HTML 5.

1_player3• 12 years ago

That's what I miss the most from pre-Web 2.0 Internet, the Geocities era: there were a lot of small and manually curated sites (as opposed to news aggregators and SEO spam sites) on any kind of topic.

Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it.

greyfade• 12 years ago

Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real depth and passion in it.

Mostly because the Wikipedians won't even allow it (whether due to a lack of references or because it's not "relevant-" or "notable-enough") in the first place.

hlmencken• 12 years ago

umm... tumblr dude. geez

bri3d• 12 years ago

I've found that forums seem to provide much of the knowledge previously transferred through Geocities. Detailed, human, non-encyclopedified information about almost anything is available spread through a vast quantity of subject-specific forums across the Internet rather than across webrings hosted on Geocities and the ilk.

I think part of the reason for the shift is that forums have gotten much more advanced: most include a personal homepage, photo gallery, and provisions for making "uber/FAQ" threads that easily surpass the most meticulously curated Geocities sites.

dfc• 12 years ago

  > Now our only source of knowledge is Wikipedia, which is great per se, but
  > the vast amount of knowledge it collects is very shallow, there's no real
  > depth and passion in it.

I love these personally curated pages. But lets be honest, the wikipedia page has more information about the conveyer belts listed and it has links to references, e.g. the ADB grant for the belt in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conveyor_belt#Long_belt_convey...

One area where the personally curated sites continues to thrive is the time-nuts folks. If you have the slightest interest in all things metrology you can lose hours reading about anything from time measurement gear and GPSDOs to policy decisions regarding deccoupling civil time from the earth's rotation. Definitely worth checking out if you have some spare time:

  - http://www.leapSecond.com (Tom Van Baak)
  - http://www.niceties.com/time.html (Doug Hogarth)
  - http://prc68.com/I/timefreq.shtml (Brooke Clarke)
  - http://www.febo.com/time-freq (John Ackermann)
  - http://www.rt66.com/~shera (Brooks Shera)
  - http://www.qsl.net/zl1bpu/PRECISION (Murry Greenman)
  - http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx (John Miles)
  - http://www.ko4bb.com/Timing (Didier Juges)

In addition to a fondness for Ham Radio call signs time-nuts also keep up with HTML5;) HTML5 graph of US Western Power Grid deviation from 60 HZ: http://wa6rzw.homelinux.net/addon/grid/gauge/hertz.html

aw3c2• 12 years ago

Remember that when the next person says "when it is free then you are the product!!" or "the world wide web would not function without advertising!!". Intrinsic motivation goes a long way.

bhhaskin• 12 years ago

Imagine being lost in the middle of nowhere. Then all of a sudden, conveyor belt.

baddox• 12 years ago

I'd probably hop on. It has to go somewhere, after all. Unless it's the world's largest circular conveyor belt.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

i would try to follow it, but i would definitely not hop on. especially if it's carrying rocks. nothing good happens to rocks on a conveyor belt.

brador• 12 years ago

I'd break it, then someone will come to fix it and rescue me.

subdane• 12 years ago

Jack Handy

erjiang• 12 years ago

I shouldn't be surprised, but the second was already mapped in OpenStreetMap,[0] and I've now added the first.[1]

Unfortunately, the default renderer doesn't know how to draw a line of "man_made=conveyor_belt"...

[0] http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202757736

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/278131952

elwell• 12 years ago

the phosphate trail the wind blew on the ground: http://goo.gl/maps/j9wnh

bigd• 12 years ago

I always wonder what would have happened if humanity had invested in conveyor belts instead of cars and roads for the last 100 years. I can't shake away the sensation that it could have been a better call.

gizmo6862• 12 years ago

In Asimov's I Robot books, Earth has a public transport system based on conveyor belts. A 'highway' would have many lanes running next to each other, gradually getting faster as you moved towards the inner lanes.

When I first read that book, I thought it seemed like a lot of wasted space because of the amount of parallel lanes you would need to achieve highway speeds. Then I started driving and noticed how wide our highways already are.

mturmon3• 12 years ago

Hmm, are you sure you aren't thinking of the short story "The Roads Must Roll" by Heinlein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)? The setup you're describing sounds just like the one in that story.

I don't recall the same setup in the I, Robot stories (but it's been a long time).

kalleth• 12 years ago

It's not the "I, Robot" books, it's the quadrilogy sometimes called the "Robot" series (confusing, I know). "The Caves of Steel", "The Naked Sun", "Robots of Dawn", "Robots and Empire".

These are without a doubt my favourite of Asimov's books :)

Earth has evolved to a point where the population lives in Cities (capitalisation is important!) -- massive, hundreds of square miles completely enclosed with no outside areas at all. They might as well be space stations.

Transit within these cities takes place on 'strips' for local transport -- think of them as 'lanes' on a freeway. The first strip you step on to is an acceleration strip (onramp), which gets you up to speed to then step onto faster strips.

There's also an "Expressway", which is basically a metro, which you step onto from the fastest strip (I think there is an acceleration strip too) which takes over when you want to go longer distances.

Then for even longer distances you have aircars (planes!).

It's a really good system, but only for highly, highly urbanised areas. I think there's only 2 or 3 cities on the planet at the moment truly dense enough. New York, and perhaps central London.

vacri• 12 years ago

Cablecars are essentially a conveyor-belt form of transport. They require a lot of infrastructure and if there's a breakage, the whole system is down rather than just one piece. They also make noise everywhere, even when there's no traffic in sight.

Then, of course, if your conveyor belt is pedestrian-based, you have exposure to the elements (also meaning limited long-distance travel due to slow speed) and switching between conveyors would be troublesome (particularly if you're inform or have baggage). If you instead ride in some sort of pod, you can up the speed and protect yourself from the elements, but you still need to get it on and off the conveyor belt smoothly; it's be something approaching the complexity of a car anyway. How also would you prioritise/speed up emergency vehicle traffic, which often has to go as quickly as possible?

It's certainly an interesting thought experiment, coming up with the pros and cons.

salgernon• 12 years ago

Cable cars also have the benefit of (effectively) regenerative braking. when your loaded car is going down hill, you're adding energy to the system to help pull another car up. ski lifts too, for that matter.

mseebach• 12 years ago

it could have been a better call

You assume that there was a call. Modern roads are just a long series of small, natural, incremental progressions on, essentially, a beaten path through the woods. Many of them are probably even in much the same places.

Cars are much the same. First, crude carts, then progressively bigger carts drawn by progressively bigger animals, then someone builds an "artificial animal", put it inside the car and so on.

There has been some non-continuous breaks, the most notable one is the railroad which present a new set of benefits and challenges. The biggest challenge is that railroads require exclusivity in usage (different kinds of road users can share the road, ultimately by temporarily stepping off the road) which is very difficult to allow without central planning. And central planning is really, really difficult.

seany• 12 years ago

For the bay area locals there's a decent length conveyor system in the Santa Cruz mountains that runs into the cement plant in Davenport. It's hard to gauge the size of it with out trespassing, but you drive over it if you are on Bonny Dune Rd.

TylerE• 12 years ago

2 miles, more or less, at least that's what I get eyeballing it: http://goo.gl/maps/QQKqa

el_benhameen• 12 years ago

That's been shut down for a while if I'm not mistaken. The supports for the old loading pier are a pretty cool sight, though.

ilamont2• 12 years ago

One can easily detect it by the phosphate spillage south of it.

As a teenager I worked at the end of a delivery conveyor belt for a supermarket. This was an unusual setup for a supermarket (but maybe for industrial or factory settings it's nothing special). The supermarket is located over a major highway. It's the Star Market over the Mass Pike/I90 outside of Boston (1). Customers had to take an escalator to the second floor, and after shopping and paying, 2-3 paper grocery bags were loaded into a small numbered cart. The customers were given plastic cards with the corresponding numbers.

The carts were swung onto the top level of a double-decker conveyer belt. It went down to the first floor (street level) and into a long, basement like room with a conveyer belt and a road paralleling it. Customers would drive their cars into this long room, pop the trunk, and hand me their cards. I would match up the bags, and place them in the trunk. The empty carts were placed on the bottom level of the conveyer belt, to be brought back to the Muzak-filled main level of the supermarket.

The room was filled with fumes and noise from the waiting cars and the interstate tunnel that was next to it. The incessant rattling and squeaking of thousands of metal rollers on the conveyer belts was irritating, although we got used to it (one thing I just realized -- upstairs where the customers were it was an actual belt, which was quiet, but down where we were it was those damn rollers, which were like 1950s-era metal roller skate wheels). We were paid $3.65/hour (minimum wage at the time). But the things that worried us from day to day was the cry of "mix" (human error, wrong bags placed in wrong car) or a spill.

Here's what happened with the spills. As the carts came from the 2f to 1f, they went through a series of turns, including at least one 90 degree turn and a full 180 at the bottom of a decline. This spot was where most of the spills took place. It was apparently unavoidable, owing to the layout of the store, the location of the slopes on the belt, the road and loading area, and the needs of the customers to get their cars loaded quickly. The nature of groceries (heavy/light loads, multiple packaging sizes, etc.) and the technology used at the time made it hard to find an easy fix to the problem. Watermelons rolling around the bottom of the carts were the worst.

I don't have any profound observations about this, other than spillage is a consideration for people who design and manage conveyer belts, and that the cost can be made manageable for both small and large systems. And these belts can be designed to last years or decades. The belt that we used in that market was in use for more than 20 years by the time I started working there in the 1980s, and it (or a similar system, using the same route) is still in use today, some 50 years after it was installed.

1. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shaw's+Supermarket/@42.350...

lectrick• 12 years ago

The supermarket is located over a major highway

Instantly I thought of the Star Market over the Mass Pike, before I read the next sentence. And I only lived in Boston for a few years!

tfe• 12 years ago

My hometown grocery store had an (by the sound of it) almost identical system. No vertical component though. Just a way to get groceries from the check stands to the pickup lane.

joshwa• 12 years ago

My childhood supermarket! That conveyor system is probably one of the reasons I went into engineering!

lostlogin• 12 years ago

For anyone interested, Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid" describes a setup like this too. It's a very funny book as well if anyone is after a good read.

aqzman• 12 years ago

It's a very funny book as well if anyone is after a good read.

I think that can be said for all of Bill Bryson's books.

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

I got in trouble for hitting the "stop" button on the escalator as a kid at that store (my little brother was racing up the "down" escalator at the time). My dad made me apologize to the manager. I'd forgotten about that...

chiph• 12 years ago

How did the store come to be built like that? Normally, when they run a major road, they'll buy out all the property owners to get a right-of-way.

ilamont2• 12 years ago

It's a strange setup. Historically, the railroad lines existed 100 years before the Mass Pike was planned and built in the 1950s and early 1960s. When the state officials/national highway officials decided to expand the route to 6-lanes plus the RR, they basically leveled a bunch of neighborhoods in Boston and Newton (I assume via eminent domain). The turnpike authority developed a scheme (pushed by a large insurance company/developer in Boston) to lease "air rights" above the pike. That's why the Prudential Center in Boston and Star Market were built above the pike in 1963, and a few years later, the hotel in Newton Corner and some buildings attached to the Hancock tower in Boston.

The story is here:

http://www.edrgroup.com/pdf/mta-economic-v2.pdf

mryingster• 12 years ago

This is weird. I've only been to MA once in my life, and it was about 2 months ago. I was travelling back to Boston on the I90 and went under that store. It was the weirdest looking building. It made an impression on me because it seemed like such a bizarre layout. I wanted to stop and check it out, but alas, I had no time.

Theodores• 12 years ago

A lot of fun can be had with conveyor belts. Unexpectedly turning one on whilst someone is standing on one is always funny, whether in an industrial 'dangerous' situation or in some made-for-TV scenario.

Incredibly there is good money to be made in conveyor belts designed specifically for film and television:

http://www.canningconveyor.co.uk/videos/c/4/tumbleator-video...

In the UK people of a certain age can remember the conveyor belt of 'The Generation Game', which always had a 'cuddly toy' on it, e.g.: http://youtu.be/pa4KoACYzyU?t=4m45s

yitchelle• 12 years ago

This belt crosses an international border. It would be interesting to see if there are any border security controls on a conveyor belt of its contents in both directions.

Anyone have any info on this?

The Longest Conveyor Belt

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