A 10 foot MDR bed leaves us assembled, wired and powder coated. Not a pallet of rails, rollers, driver cards and a bag of hardware with an assembly drawing on top. That one difference is most of your installation labor, and most of the ways a startup goes sideways.
Every conveyor supplier ships something. What separates them is how much work is still left when the truck pulls away.
Installation becomes set, level, couple and power. The bed gets stood up on its legs, leveled, connected to the bed beside it, and energized. Everything that can be done on a bench under good light was already done on a bench under good light.
Six steps. Two of them happen outside our walls right now, and we will tell you which two rather than letting you assume otherwise.
The bed is built as a solid model first: side frames, crossmembers, tie plates, supports and rollers, assembled in software before anything is real. Interferences and fit problems surface here, where fixing one costs an afternoon instead of a site visit.
In HouseEach formed part is unfolded from the model into a flat pattern with bend allowances built in, then exported as a cut-ready DXF. A 10 foot straight side frame comes out as a single 120 inch flat with every hole and slot already in it.
In HouseOur files go to a local fabrication shop that lasers the flats and brakes the bends. They are building to our geometry, not interpreting a sketch, so what comes back is what was modeled.
Local Fab ShopCoating goes on formed parts before assembly, so coverage is complete instead of stopping where a weld or a bracket got in the way. Any RAL color, which means we match your plant standard rather than asking you to live with ours.
Coating VendorFrames bolted, rollers set, driver cards mounted, zone wiring run and dressed. Done by us at our shop, by hand, on a bench. The bed is put together completely before it is crated.
In HouseEvery bed is checked against our drawing library for dimensional tolerance and compliance before it ships. The drawing it was built from is the drawing it gets measured against.
In HouseThis is the decision that shapes everything else about how our conveyor behaves after it is installed, and it is worth understanding before you compare us to a welded frame.
Welding puts heat into a long thin part, and heat pulls it. On a 10 foot frame that shows up as bow and twist that has to be fought back out. MDR needs the two side frames parallel and the roller centers square, or the product tracks badly forever. Bolted assembly never introduces the problem in the first place.
Powder goes onto separate formed parts, so it reaches the back of every rail and the inside of every hole. A welded frame gets coated as one piece, with burned coating at each weld and hand touch-up over it. Ours has no touch-up because there is nothing to touch up.
A forklift eventually hits something. On a bolted bed that is an unbolt, a replacement part and a wrench. On a welded bed it is a cutting torch inside your building, a welder, and a coating repair, with the line down for all of it.
Lines move. Docks get repurposed. Bolted beds come apart and go back together in a new arrangement with the parts you already own, which makes an expansion an extension rather than a demolition.
The configuration most systems are built from. Widths, lengths and roller selection change with your product; the construction does not.
| Standard bed length | 10 feet, assembled and wired as one unit |
| Construction | Fully bolted. No welded frame joints |
| Frame | Formed sheet side frames with punched roller and mounting patterns, cut from our own flat patterns |
| Structure | Crossmembers and tie plates on bolted connections; floor supports with adjustable legs, gusset arms and base plates |
| Finish | Powder coat, any RAL color, applied to formed parts before assembly |
| Drive | 24 volt motorized driven roller, factory direct from NDW |
| Controls | Driver cards mounted and wired at our bench; PLC and HMI programming written and simulated before shipment |
| Inspection | Checked against our drawing library for dimensional tolerance and compliance |
| On site | Set on legs, level, couple to the adjacent bed, connect power and network |
You are going to ask, so here it is without being asked.
The model, the flat patterns, the drawings, the assembly, the wiring, the panel build, the PLC and HMI code, the commissioning and the support after. Every step that determines whether the finished line holds rate is performed by us and is not subcontracted to anyone.
Laser cutting, brake forming and powder coating are performed by established local vendors working from our files and our specifications. These are capable, widely available processes, and we would rather buy them well than own them badly. Our own fabrication building is in county permitting now.
Assembly and wiring are ours today, done at our shop. What the new building adds is floor space and bench space: more beds in build at once, and room to run a finished bed under power before it ships rather than after it lands. That one is not a maybe.
Whether we bring cutting and forming in house depends on whether the volume justifies the machine and the person to run it. If it saves our customers money it happens. If it just looks impressive on a website, it does not.
A 200,000 square foot plant is a real thing to have, and we do not have one. What we have is the engineering that decides what gets cut, the assembly that decides whether it fits, and the controls that decide whether it holds rate. Those are the three that determine what your line does on the first Monday, and all three are ours.
The third one is the longest story. See what actually gets engineered into the controls →
Tell us what has to move and how fast, and we will come back with a real number and a real schedule. Drawings, DWG or DXF files and photos all welcome.
Request a Conveyor QuoteSystem down right now? Call 352-440-9992.