AFOTEK Shuttle Conveyor System (ASF)
Conveyor technology at the highest level

With conventional conveyor technology solutions, all of the goods are transported using a conveyor chain, which means that all components move through the system at the same conveyor speed. All workpieces go through the pretreatment, painting and drying process with identical cycle times.

With the AFOTEK Shuttle Conveyor System (ASF), however, each transport unit has its own drive unit with individual control. This means that each product carrier can be flexibly controlled as required. On the one hand, this enables variable process speeds within the system, and on the other hand, reverse travel can also be implemented within a process.

The flexible drive concept allows you to drive through coating booths at low speeds and to pick up speed and speed on open transport routes. With AFOTEK’s conveyor technology, processing cycle times can be designed independently, which leads to significantly higher efficiency, lower process costs and faster throughput times.

The individual shuttles can bridge up to 250 mm without transport rails, which means that the conveyor rail, e.g. in fire gates or other fire compartments, can be interrupted without restricting transport.

The flexibility of the AFOTEK Shuttle Conveyor System (ASF) is based on a fully modular rail system that can be used to implement a wide variety of system layouts.

The heart of the ASF are the transport rails made of anodized aluminium profiles with internal rollers. Transport shuttles are used to carry products and run on the rails with little lubrication and little maintenance. Depending on the size of the part, the transport shuttles are custom-made, one to eight metres in length as desired.

The flexibility of the conveyor system goes so far that transport rails can be arranged parallel in some areas of the system, for example in transverse displacement magazines, buffers or ovens. This makes it possible to move a large number of product carriers at the same time in a very small space. Cross-transport is also possible in this constellation and ensures a closed transport cycle within the system.

Thanks to the highly flexible, modular structure, layouts of almost any size can be constructed. AFOTEK's conveyor technology adapts perfectly to available spatial constraints and customer production processes. In confined spaces, compact solutions that extend over several floors are also possible.

The AFOTEK Shuttle Conveyor System can be expanded and modified cost-effectively at any time, as the desired modules, e.g. buffers or transverse displacement magazines, can be easily integrated into the existing system. Overtaking routes can also be retrofitted without much effort.