Original upload date: Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Mon, 06 Dec 2021 01:07:21 GMT
This is a model of a walking beam conveyor that would have been used in the first automated work cells in the 1950's. Each pen or marker on the conveyor represents a piece of material, and at each of
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the "stops", there would have been some automated machining function performed on the part. Walking beams ran very slowly, as they had to go slowly enough that each machining function could be completed at each work station before the walking beam picked all the pieces of material up and moved them to the next work station. They were generally equipped with a feed magazine to load the material on at one end, and an accumulator conveyor at the discharge end. They were purely mechanical in nature, and more or less were "The thing" until plc controls and hydraulics and stepper motors made this type of conveyor/automation obsolete.
