| HISTORY of STEEL BELTS |
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The First Solid Metal Belt: It is not known when the first solid metal belt was used in a conveyor application, but one of the earliest recorded uses was for producing a film base material for the photographic industry. The solid metal belt was made from silver or nickel-plated copper and was recorded in a patent by Stevens and Leffert dated December, 1896. Solid Steel Belts: It is believed that the first solid steel belts were made from the same material used for making band saws. Because band saws were relatively narrow, the first solid steel belts were also fairly narrow. With improvements in steel making, the raw material widths increased which provided wider and wider raw materials for solid steel belts. Stainless Steel Belts: The effect of chromium and nickel in steel was studied in detail during the early 1900s. Because many alloys which contained chromium and nickel did not rust, stain, or pit when exposed to the atmosphere, they were given the term "stainless steel ". It was found that some of these stainless steels could be cold worked by rolling to relatively high strength levels similar to the carbon steel discussed above. This combined with the stainless characteristic made these steels extremely interesting for a large number of applications including steel belts. Even though the first stainless steel belts were first produced in the early 1930s, it was not until after World War II that stainless steel belts became widely used. It was Type 301 stainless steel that became the common grade for solid stainless steel belts. This grade could be cold rolled to a number of high strength conditions and had excellent resistance to atmospheric corrosion and other corrosive media. |
