Hello all,

I have a 42" wide belt sander for sanding Wood and MDF passage doors. the table adjusts up and down on our sander not the drums.
I am looking for some ideas for indeed and outfeed systems to make it easier for my guys to send them through. Less manual lifting and setting doors down. Doesn't appear to be a lot out there. I know Doucet makes a return conveyor but don't think that will eliminate much for lifting on and off. So far the best thought is scissor lift with photo eye to lift and lower as pallets of doors go through.

Thanks for any input any of you may have!

Hydraulic scissor tables with ball rollers.

I'd make tables that are held on the sander with a pivoting joint to maintain height and parallelism, and then you only have to adjust one end of the tables. You might consider something like a laser level to shoot a line to the conveyor to level it.

I like your idea of the automatically adjusting scissors lifts. One on each end that go up and down with the table. Should be fairly straight forward to make. Plus the infeed side can be stacked with doors which makes it double duty......reduces lifting and provides automatic height adjustment for the next door.

The outfeed side could be hold the sanded stack if you could come up with a way to protect the previous door that went through the sander. Pretty cool setup.

BH Davis

Thanks for the input so far, the biggest thing i'm struggling with now is figuring out how to flip the doors to send them back threw to sand the other side. Trying to reduce as much lifting as possible while not chancing damage.

Flipping can be accomplished with a 3rd scissors lift.

Parked next to the outfeed lift one person can roll the door over (lengthwise rolling axis) from the outfeed lift to the 3rd lift next to it. Very little weight involved. It also resolves the issue of a door buildup on the outfeed lift. Someone will be there manually flipping each door onto the 3rd lift.

To sand the other side roll the entire 3rd lift to the infeed side and replace the original infeed unit with it. Doors are already flipped and ready to go.

BH

The glass industry uses air tables. (like air hockey) The entire sheet of glass can be let go and gently lands on the table. With the film of air under it, it becomes nearly weightless to move.

Air tables are used on large beam saws for easy repositioning of a stack of particle board.

Flipping is still the hard part for one man.

They make vacum lifters for panel handling that can turn them over with little effort [ no lifting]. Off the shelf is always simpler than " custom' which seldom provides the ability to do other jobs with one piece of equipment.

I think Bosch and Makita sanders work pretty well, with rounder surfaces too. In general, orbital sanders have been most useful and versatile in my experience. I've been working in a detailing crew for 2 years and Bosch GSS20-40 has been what we use, it's pretty great!

https://www.craftyhangouts.com/best-sander-for-furniture/