We believe that composite rollers, if well designed and constructed, compete directly with steel rollers in every application. They particularly shine when that same high tons application also has moisture, corrosion, acids such as sulphuric acid, challenging operating environments with spillage and poor maintenance. We are thinking hard about composite everything just like in Formula 1, high performance cycling, electric cars and even jetliners.
Our first effort was an injection molded roller from HDPE (High density polyethylene). HDPE is well known for its physical and technical qualities such as abrasion and acid resistance, also its toughness. The challenge with standard unreinforced plastics is that while they have great abrasion resistance and don’t rust, don’t need painting, they just aren’t stiff enough to handle the loads of high performance conveyors that exist all over the world, like the copper mines in Chile and Peru, the iron ore mines of Western Australia and Brazil or the high speed coal load out terminals that exist in every mining country. We aren’t forgetting about the hard rock mines of South Africa, the USA and Canada.
