Conveyor Blog

You can save $30 by registering early for this years Pack Expo, November 9-13, 2008, at McCormick Place in Chicago. This deal will last until October 21, 2008. When you plan your list of companies to visit at Pack Expo, be sure to add QC Industries in Booth 2930 in the South Building.

Tags: Trade Shows

Today our community mourns the loss of Staff Sargeant Matt Maupin. He was the American soldier who went unaccounted for the longest amount of time in Iraq. His remains were found and his identity was confirmed through DNA testing yesterday. It has been almost four years since his convoy was ambushed, but our community of Batavia, OH (a suburb of Cincinnati) continued to hold out hope for his safe return. Over those four years, “Matt” has become a household name in this area. The signs on many businesses we pass every day urged his safe return; his high school lovingly maintained a fence dedicated to him.

Matt’s parents founded the Yellow Ribbon Support Center here; donations to their organization go to support the morale of our soldiers overseas through gifts and care packages.

This is a tough loss to take for our community. We hope you’ll join us in remembering Matt and praying for the safe return of all our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 125 Series belt conveyors shown here under a CO2 Air, Inc. dry ice press use a -45°F silicone release belt specified by Southern Industrial Equipment (SIE). CO2 Air, Inc. is a leading dry ice and liquid CO2 manufacturer shipping equipment worldwide. Chris Kupronis, an Application Engineer with SIE, said the extremely cold temperatures led to some challenges that had to be worked through. For instance they had to place heat tape on the holes so any condensation would not flash freeze on the conveyor. The silicone belt is also critical with the temperature as low as it is.

CO2 Air Inc. offers a new RF-1800HD press which is capable of making 1800 pounds per hour of one pound 5” x 5” x 3/4” ice blocks (the standard size piece). The press is designed to make up to 6 pieces per stroke. They were kind enough to mention that the QC Industries conveyors have been working very nicely where our competitors had failed.

Last week Carolina Fluid Components celebrated their 30th Anniversary in a big way by exhibiting at Canon Communications’ ATX South. “We had the largest booth in the entire show and did it the right way by including many companies who are our main lines that we represent” said Ed Jarnac, Marketing Manger from CFC. “This gave customers an opportunity to not only see a wide variety of products we represent, but talk to representatives from each company.” Ed and I agree the show was very good. The aisles were full from start to finish.

CFC also treated their vendors and customers very nicely, providing transportation to and from their facility for the two day show as well as a wonderful dinner for the manufactures on Wednesday evening at T-Bones on Lake Wiley in South Carolina. CFC gave many of the companies a chance to present new opportunities to the entire sales and support staff of CFC. Congratulations CFC, here’s to another 30!

We’ve added a new feature to the website: you can now browse our catalog directly on our site without waiting for a PDF to download. Thanks to issuu.com, the embedded flash catalog is very easy to use.

Choose “Catalog” from any of our product pages to be taken directly to the relevant page. Simply click the buttons at the top of the catalog to flip the pages; clicking a page opens a larger view in a new window. From there you can zoom in and move around, flip to different pages and print just the pages you need. You can also choose a full screen view or bring up a thumbnail view to look for the page you need.

It’s easy to share relevant pages with colleagues by clicking the email button at the top of the catalog. From there you can send an email (with a note marking something important) or copy the link. You can even embed our catalog in your Facebook, Myspace page or web site.

Give the catalog above a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

Tags: Marketing | Web Site

“We love how the QC Industries conveyors hold up. They are a high quality conveyor and the InnerDrive system is simple to use and keeps the entire conveyor low profile, not just the frame area,” said Gabriel Perez of Xtreme Steam in Atlanta, Georgia.

We had a chance to catch up with Gabriel last week at West Pack. Xtreme Steam (and QC Industries) will be exhibiting at South Pack in Charlotte, March 19th and 20th.

In Gabriel’s demo he dumps chocolate and ketchup on the conveyor and the steam cleaning system cleans it away leaving the conveyor belt nice and dry. If you ever see Xtreme Steam at a show, take a minute to watch the demonstration; he does a great job. You’ll probably agree with me that this guy needs his own infomercial!

We are honored to be this week’s featured web sighting on Pharmaceutical and Medical Packaging News’ website. They are highlighting our new Conveyor Selection Guide on their homepage.

Tags: Marketing | News

This year should be the most exciting QC Industries has ever had exhibiting. We’ll be exhibiting in five shows in 2008. We have some surprises coming out this year you won’t want to miss.

We start the year heading west to West Pack in Anaheim, CA, January 29, 30 and 31st. We will then be exhibiting in Charlotte, NC at ATX South, March 19th and 20th. Next we move to New York on June 3rd, 4th and 5th for the East Pack show. In the fall we are excited to head back to the new Assembly Technology Expo — last year’s was the best show they have had in a long time and this year’s looks even better. That show is in Rosemont September 23rd, 24th and 25th. We will wrap up the year celebrating PMMI’s 75th Anniversary at one of the top 200 shows in the country, Pack Expo, at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago November 9–13.

Make your plans now to join us at one of these shows.

Tags: Marketing | Trade Shows

We came across this video that shows one of our 125 Series cleated belt conveyors used to transfer reams of paper into a shrink wrapping machine from Pro Pack Group.

We love seeing video of our conveyors in action. If you have videos you’d be willing to share, drop me a line at cthompson at qcindustries dot com.

One of our long-time customers, Tella Tool, is featured in the January edition (PDF link) of Metalforming Magazine. Our 250 Series Center Drive Conveyors form an integral part of their portable automated inspection stations, which have virtually eliminated the defective parts that were being delivered to Tella’s customers.

The inspection stations were designed by distributor Gem Automation to visually inspect automotive frame rails for improperly inserted nuts and bolts. The bad parts are pushed off the line into a locked box for later disposal. The stations can be moved quickly from press to press and configured to detect a wide variety of parts and features.

“Working with QC and Gem, we developed a conveyor arrangement that allows the parts to come out of the die in somewhat of an orderly fashion,” says Jim Szymanowski, Tella Tool’s sensor specialist. “Orienting the parts in a predictable way, to ensure that the key features fall repeatedly within the field of view of the vision system, was critical to preventing any bad parts from slipping through the system, and it proved quite challenging. But we were able to get where we needed to be.”