Conveyor Blog

Recently I’ve seen a number of articles about a new show coming to ABC in January called The Conveyor Belt of Love (only because I have a Google news alert set up for “conveyors”). As a conveyor guy, it immediately caught my eye. You can see the preview below. It looks like a terrible show, as it’s even more like a meat market than The Bachelor.

Here’s how the format works:

“If a woman is interested in someone, that man will step aside and wait as the rest of the men go by.  But if another man comes by on the belt that seems better than that woman’s first choice, she can swap out the man waiting off of the belt as many times as she wants until the last man has passed by. If two or more of the women are interested in the same man, the tables turn and the man on the conveyor belt gets to choose which one he would like to wait for. After all 30 men have made it through the ‘Conveyor Belt of Love,’ each woman is left with her final choice as they embark on a date in the hope of finding a true connection.”

While we’ve done conveyors for show-business before, this doesn’t look like any conveyor we’ve ever built (in the first shot you can see a clipper lace splice, which we almost never use). It did however remind me of our own Conveyor Belt of Love, so to speak. It’s a video we shot a few years ago to prove to a customer that their conveyor could easily move — and index — their required load of 1000 lbs.

Congratulations to our Cleveland distributor, Conveyer & Caster – Equipment for Industry. They were recently honored with a Weatherhead 100 Award which honors the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio. Last year they ranked 95th, but this year they’ve moved up to 63rd. Not bad for a firm that’s been around nearly 50 years.

It’s hard to believe how fast 2009 has gone by. It really doesn’t seem like it’s time for Thanksgiving and Christmas yet. We’re all looking forward to a few days to spend time with our families and rest and recuperate from this hectic year. As such, our offices will be closed this Thursday and Friday (November 26 & 27) for the Thanksgiving holidays and again from December 24 – January 3. We’ll reopen on January 4 as usual.

If you have a service emergency during those dates, please call our main number and leave a message. One of our on-call service technicians will return your call.

Here in Cincinnati, we kick off the holiday season each year with Balluminaria, a hot air balloon glow at Eden Park. I’d like to share this tradition with you to help get your holiday season off on the right foot.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on organizing and cataloging all the various pieces of literature we’ve produced over the past 28 years. It’s been fun to see where the company has come from, and, as a graphic designer, to trace the history of our logo over that time.

The “logo” above appeared on our first catalog in 1983. That’s the only time it ever appeared.

This logo first appeared on the cover of our 1989 catalog. It was our first official logo and versions of it were used for eight years.

Here you can also see the origins of the “QC” in our name. It comes from “Quick Conversion” which allowed our customers in the metal stamping industry to change out their dies and conveyors quickly.

This logo is the first direct predecessor of our current logo, appearing on the cover of our 1997 catalog. When this logo is reduced our name becomes nearly unreadable, but versions of it somehow persisted for seven years.

One oddity of the 1997 catalog: while the logo above appeared on the cover, the logo at right appeared on the back. To my knowledge, this is the only time the left side of the “Q” ever showed. It almost seems to have been an accident.

The logo evolved slightly for the 2001 catalog. This logo continued with numerous changes (in some versions the word “modular” is replaced with “low profile”).

This logo first appeared on the cover of our 2004 catalog and has been used without modification to this day.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick peek back at our history!

Every year our employees go all out for Halloween and this year was no exception. We had a lot of great costumes this year, but as always, there can only be one winner. Congratulations to Yvain Jomphe, our IT Team Leader — and resident Love Guru.

Our runner up was Wanda Collier, one of our purchasers for her Little Red Riding Hood inspired costume:

And in third place was Dave Endres, our General Manager:

Happy Halloween!

We’ve updated the design of our blog to make it easier to read on mobile devices like iPhones, Android phones and some Blackberries. If your phone is supported you’ll automatically see the new mobile design instead of our standard layout.

This week we’ll be exhibiting at MidPak in Minneapolis, MN alongside our local distributor, Automation, Inc. We’ll be showing our new Automation Series conveyors. Please stop by and visit us in Booth #405. The show runs Wednesday and Thursday, but it’s not too late to register for free admission.

Tomorrow our Cleveland distributor, Conveyer and Caster — Equipment for Industry, is hosting an open house. They’ll be having two speakers and a table top trade show in their warehouse. We’ll be showing our Automation Series conveyors at the trade show portion, along with these other manufacturers:

• Albion Casters – Industrial Casters
• Shepherd Casters – Light Duty Casters
• Roach Conveyors – Industrial Conveyors
• Steel King – Pallet Racking
• Presto Lifts – Lift Equipment
• Harrington Hoists – Hoists and Accessories
• Gorbel – Workstation Crane Systems
• Akro-Mils – Storage Products
• Lyon Workspace – Workspace Equipment
• Starrco – Modular Office Systems
• Ergonomic Specialists, LLC – Self leveling carts

Contact Conveyer & Caster — Equipment for Industry if you’d like to be a part of this event.

The September issue of Industrial Maintenance and Plant Operations (IMPO) Magazine arrived today. We are honored to find that our Automation Series conveyors placed 4th in their first annual IMPOvation Award voting!

They used a quote from one of our first Automation Series customers, Mike Stridde of CIVision:

“We at CIVision use QC Industries who have taken the low profile conveyor to an entirely new level, innovating with their push-button Tension Release system and Pivot™ drive technology. QC has quality conveyors, provides great service and is the best in the industry with quick responses and knowledgeable people. We recommend using their new Automation Series Conveyor. Congratulations on making IMPOvation’s final four.”

We placed behind three great innovations: Rite-Hite’s Rite-Vu system that protects dock workers from forklift/pedestrian collisions; Pilz’s SafetyEYE camera system for 3D safety monitoring; and Ludeca’s Rotalign Ultra shaft alignment system.

As if the IMPOvation Award wasn’t enough, IMPO also covered the new Nosebar Tail for our Automation Series Conveyors in their Conveyor Spec Check.

We recently designed and shipped a very large conveyor setup for a customer who was moving large stamped parts out of a press. Due to the width of the parts, a very wide conveyor was needed. Our solution was to mate two AS40 Automation Series Conveyors together in a gang driven configuration. In order to make sure no parts got trapped between the conveyors, our specials engineers designed a custom plate to span the gap. The parts will span both belts. The entire configurations is 20′ long and can be removed from the press for cleaning.

This video shows just how large this system is. Note: These are not the final parts that will be moving on this conveyor.