Rectangular Circular Conveyor

Rectangular Circular Conveyor replaces the two 180° arcs of an oval loop with four 90° corners. The loop then has straight runs on all four sides instead of two, and that is the whole reason to specify it: stations can sit on the short sides as well as the long ones.

Where Rectangular Circular Conveyor fits

Choose rectangular when the process needs more station positions than two straight runs provide, when the loop has to fit a rectangular machine footprint, or when process equipment — robots, presses, vision systems — has to approach the loop square-on from more than two directions.

Choose oval instead when the process is a straightforward sequence along two runs. A 180° arc gives a longer, smoother transition than a 90° corner, and the carrier spends less of each cycle changing direction.

Configuration for a Rectangular Circular Conveyor

The 23 mm rail offers the wider range of corner radii, from 200 mm up. The 28 mm rail carries roughly twice the load but starts at a 255 mm corner, so a heavier payload forces a larger minimum corner and a larger footprint in both directions. Where floor space is tight and the payload is near the boundary, that trade is worth checking before the layout is fixed.

Performance

Payload is quoted per carrier against the fixture geometry, not against mass alone. A tall or cantilevered fixture consumes capacity through the moment it generates at index, and that is what our engineering team calculates during quotation.

Corner behaviour of Rectangular Circular Conveyor

A 90° corner turns the carrier in half the path length an oval arc uses. Two consequences are worth designing around:

The carrier changes direction faster. For unsecured or delicate workpieces, specify positive location in the nest rather than relying on the fixture walls. Where the product cannot tolerate it, link drive — called connecting rod drive in older catalogues — gives a cam-profiled motion without impact at index — see Link Drive Circular Conveyor.

Four corners means eight joints rather than four. Each corner segment meets a straight run at both ends. Loop assembly and joint alignment matter more here than on an oval, and station positions are best kept away from the corners.

How the footprint is built up

The overall envelope of a Rectangular Circular Conveyor is not the rectangle drawn through the station positions. Each side runs from the end of one corner segment to the start of the next, so the corner diameter is added to both the length and the width, and the frame, drive unit and positioning mechanisms sit outside that again.

That is why the corner radius is a layout decision rather than a detail. Moving from a 200 mm corner to a 255 mm corner — which a heavier payload on the 28 mm rail forces — grows the machine in both directions at once, and on a cell laid out to the millimetre it is a change to catch before the frame drawing is issued rather than after.

Where the cell is tight, send the available envelope with the enquiry rather than a loop size. A loop that has to fit inside 1,600 × 1,200 mm is a clearer requirement than a loop of a particular side length.

Station placement of Rectangular Circular Conveyor

Stations belong on the straight runs, clear of the tangent points where a corner meets the rail. A carrier still settling out of a corner has not reached the constant attitude the positioning mechanism works against, and tooling that comes down close to a tangent point has less room around it than the drawing suggests.

The four-sided layout is worth using for what it is good at: putting unrelated process equipment on opposite faces of the same loop so that services, guarding and operator access do not compete. A press on one long side and a vision system on a short side can each be maintained without anyone reaching across the machine.

Joints and alignment of Rectangular Circular Conveyor

Every joint is a place where the rail has to be continuous under the rollers, and a rectangular loop has twice as many as an oval. Joints are set and verified during assembly on our frame; they are not a plant adjustment. On twin-rail loops the joints on the two rails are staggered so that a carrier crosses one interface at a time rather than two together.

The tolerances that assembly works to, and how they are checked, are published with the rest of the guideway data on our technical site.

Engineering data

Assembly dimensions, selection arithmetic and joint handling are published on our technical site:

• Rectangular Track Set Dimensions
• Circular Guide Rail Joint Accuracy
• Conveyor Cycle Time Calculation

Enquiries

Send the fixture envelope and weight, required cycle time, the number and position of stations, and the available footprint. Non-standard corner radii and side lengths are available.

Frequently asked questions about Rectangular Circular Conveyor

Can a positioning station sit on a corner?

We do not place one there. A positioning mechanism works against a carrier travelling in a fixed direction at a constant attitude, and inside a 90° corner neither is true. The practical reason is the same one: the corner segment is where the loop’s joints are, and a station bolted across a joint makes both harder to set. Where the station count genuinely exceeds what four straight runs hold, the answer is a longer side or a custom path, not a station on the curve.

Is a rectangular loop slower than an oval loop of the same path length?

Not across the whole cycle, but the corners are the limiting sections. The carrier covers the same 90° of direction change in about half the path an oval arc gives it, so the corner sets the ceiling on speed rather than the straights. Lines that index short distances between adjacent stations rarely notice. Lines making a long fast move between two distant stations do, and those are the ones where a larger corner radius or link drive is worth pricing.

Can the four corners have different radii?

Yes. Corner segments are specified individually, so a loop can carry a large radius where carriers travel fast and a small one where the cell is tight. It is a non-standard build, and it has one consequence worth knowing early: the path length changes, so the carrier pitch is worked out against the actual loop rather than taken from a standard table. Send the cell envelope and the obstruction forcing the asymmetry, and our engineering team will lay it out.

Why does a heavier fixture make the whole machine bigger?

Because the payload chooses the rail and the rail chooses the smallest corner available. The 28 mm guideway carries roughly twice what the 23 mm carries, but its smallest published corner is 255 mm against 200 mm, and a corner appears at all four sides of the loop. The load increase therefore arrives as a footprint increase in both directions. Where the fixture sits near the boundary between the two rails, reducing its mass or lowering its centre of gravity is often the cheaper route to keeping the smaller rail.

Does the loop ship assembled?

Where the crate size allows, yes. The loop is built, aligned and run on its own frame before despatch, and it ships that way so the joints arrive as they were set. Larger lines are split at defined interfaces, crated in sections, and rebuilt and re-checked on site by our engineers. Either way the alignment is our work rather than the plant’s — what the plant provides is a mounting surface and the services.

Request a Quote — Circular Conveyor System