Conveyor Speed

Whats everyone running for a conveyor track speed for an Exterior Tunnel?

70-80 CPH in a 150' tunnel in summer and 90-110 CPH in winter

120-125cph 120ft tunnel

This is a great subject! My friend and I have spent the last couple of hours trying and testing different formulas from manufactures, that we came across, to come up with "track speed" of cars per hour.

I run a 135ft conveyor at "140 CPH" summer which is 49 feet per minute...
yet some formulas that I normally do not use would argue this.

I have always used conveyor speed of feet per minute multiplied by 60 divided by 21.

I get the conveyor speed by measuring a rollers distance of 15 seconds and multiplying by four. I multiply that number by 60 to get feet per hour. I then divide the feet per hour by 21 which represents (what I believe is) the avrg. car length.

I just want to make sure that this is on par of what everyone else uses to determine cars per hour.

Her is the formula I use. Average space between cars (SC) (this will vary on how close cars are loaded together, just go by your roller spacing) Then your conveyor speed in feet per second (FPS) To get this mark off 50 ft of your conveyor, time how many seconds it takes the roller to move 50 feet. Take the 50 feet and divide by the number of seconds it took, and you have your feet per second. Then calculate your average car length (CL) (sounds like alot of work I just use 15'-6") so to put it all together...

{FPS}x 3600sec/hour divide by {CL+SC}=Cars Per Hour

I have a mark on the conveyor, I time how long it takes 3 rollers to pass that point (3' 6" spacing), I then divide 3600 by that time. 30 seconds for 3 rollers equals 120 cars per hour. Also use our Tunnel Master to verify that, however, it is not as accurate since it uses whatever you program as average vehicle length. Usually within 5 cars per hour.

According to our DRB. We are running 110 CPH. (135' conveyor)

Hydropulse unit set at 85-90. Roller spacing is 3'6". No need this time of year to run fast or tight.

Max in Winter is loading for me at 60-70 cars per hour so as long as I can prep fast enough at 3'6" - 7' spacing and only miss "FOOT OFF THE BRAKE" every few mins. I can usually achieve that without changing the conveyor speed above 100.

90 to 110 according to hydropulse

I have a hard time with a chain speed in CPH. We run our car wash at 10 inches per second, or .84 feet per second. We arrived at this by asking our chemical supplier "how long a dwell time do we need for our presoak and tire chemical". Knowing feet per second, you can calculate how much chemical to apply, time between equipment, etc. We have been told it is 150 cars per hour (I guess these is 20? feet for each car!) with a 3' 6" spacing. We keep our line speed constant. It would be too much trouble to change chemical applications with each the line speed change.

Thanks for the input, I'm currently running 83-85 cars per hour and I go to 90-100 cph in the winter. hope everyone is washing it's like a roller coaster ride, up and down

Well... most in California run opposite of you guys, faster in the summer and slower in the winter... funny how our markets are so different! I run at about 80-90 now on 115ft, and thats perfect for me, only thing is a lot of customers get half way through the blowers and drive out... I don't get it!!!

Pastime I had the same problem, I got a stop and go lite from sonnys and wired it into the flip on my last blower head, when it's flips the lite turns to green "Go" solved that problem.