In the middle of the 17th century, the United States began to use aerial ropeways to transport bulk materials; in the middle of the 19th century, conveyor belt conveyors of various modern structures appeared one after another. In 1868, belt conveyors appeared in England; in 1887, screw conveyors appeared in the United States; in 1905, steel belt conveyors appeared in Switzerland; in 1906, inertial conveyors appeared in Britain and Germany. Since then, the conveyor belt conveyor has been continuously improved by the technological advancement of machinery manufacturing, electrical machinery, chemical and metallurgical industries. It has gradually developed from completing the transmission within the workshop to completing the material handling within the enterprise, between enterprises and even between cities. An indispensable part of mechanization and automation of material handling systems.

Conveyor belts are generally classified according to whether there are traction parts: conveyor belt equipment with traction parts and conveyor belt equipment without traction parts.

There are many types of conveyor belt equipment with traction parts, mainly: belt conveyors, slat conveyors, trolley conveyors, escalators, moving walks, scraper conveyors, buried scraper conveyors, bucket conveyors, bucket conveyors Hoists, suspended conveyors and aerial ropeways, etc. Conveyor belt equipment without traction parts commonly include rollers for rotating motion and screw conveyors.

The conveyor belt method began to be used in the Cincinnati slaughterhouse in 1869, and is also widely used in the canned food industry and the cast iron industry. In 1913, Ford installed the first automobile assembly line, which greatly increased the production of Model T cars.

Conveyor belts with traction elements generally include: traction elements, load-bearing components, driving devices, tensioning devices, redirecting devices, and supports. The traction parts are used to transmit traction, which can be conveyor belts, traction chains or wire ropes; the load-bearing components are used to carry materials, including hoppers, brackets or spreaders, etc.; the driving device powers the conveyor, usually by electric motors, reducers and Brake (stop) and other components; the tensioning device generally has two types of screw type and heavy hammer type, which can maintain a certain tension and sag of the traction member to ensure the normal operation of the conveyor belt; the support member is used to support the traction member or load The components can be rollers, rollers, etc.

The structural characteristics of the conveyor belt equipment with traction parts are: the materials to be transported are installed in the carrying members connected with the traction parts, or directly installed on the traction parts (such as conveyor belts), and the traction parts bypass the head and tail of each roller or sprocket. Connected to form a closed loop including a load branch for conveying materials and an unloaded branch for not conveying materials, and the continuous movement of the traction member is used to convey the materials.

The composition and characteristics of conveyor belt equipment without traction parts: The structure and composition of conveyor belt equipment without traction parts are different, and the working components used to transport materials are also different.

Their structural characteristics are: use the rotating or reciprocating movement of the working component, or use the flow of the medium in the pipeline to transport the material forward. For example, the working component of a roller conveyor is a series of rollers, which rotates to convey materials; the working component of a screw conveyor is a spiral, which rotates in a trough to push materials along the trough; the work of a vibrating conveyor The component is a trough, which reciprocates to convey the materials placed in it.