SmartConveyor- Air Stop

The Lumber stop is the popup stop that is located on the front of the Infeed Conveyor or the Linear Pickline.

The Lumber stop has two purposes the first is to hold the lumber back from spilling over the edge of the conveyor. The second is to square up that has gotten crooked while traveling down the conveyor.

The lumber stop consists of a pneumatic solenoid valve, air cylinder, cam shaft and the steel stops.

There are a few reasons that lumber stop will not function. Listed below:

1. There isn’t any air preasure to fire the air cylinder.
2. The solenoid valve isn’t getting power to fire or has gone bad.
3. The solenoid valve mechanical is clogged and slow to fire.
4. The Cam shaft is jammed on one of the bolts on the lower side.
5. Finally one of the stops is getting stuck.

Lets go through the diagnostics orders above.

Air pressure

This is fairly simple. There is an incoming port on the solenoid valve and there must be air at that location. Normally at this step we can eliminate a lof of the issues going to the solenoid valve and pressing the red button on the side. This button manually fires the solenoid valve. If that fires then we have air pressure. If it doesn’t that could mean that the solenoid is clogged but normally there will be some air that comes out of the exhaust ports.

Next inspect the hoses that come to the solenoid valve to see if one is kinked or damaged.
When the smartconveyor or pickline is connected to the Retro C the pressure comes from the main air system which has a pressure gauge on it. Make sure that pressure is over 90 psi. Also on the Retro C there is a union coupler that is located near the scrap electrical box that connects to the SmartConveyor.

The solenoid isn’t getting the signal

On the Retro C or the Linear pickline there is a button to manually fire the lumber stops. On the Retro C it is located on the main cutting tab (Main Screen) on the Linear pickline it is located on the Repair tab. By toggling this button the solenoid valve has a light on it that will turn on or off. If that light turns on and the valve doesn’t fire and you have air then the most common issue is the solenoid has gone bad and must be replaced. If the light is not turning on then we will need to look into the electrical side which we won’t go into this article. See SmartConveyor Lumber Stop Electrical. or Linear Pickline Lumber Stop Electrical for how to troubleshoot this issue.

The solenoid mechanical valve is clogged and slow to fire

This normally shows up as the stops slowly raise and lower and eventually they will stop.

The first thing to check is the exhaust ports. The exhaust ports may have speed controls on them and the purpose of those is to slow down the air stop. Open those up so that air can flow freely. After that press the red button to manually fire the valve. If that doesn’t fix the problem remove air pressure and remove the fittings and make sure something hasn’t gotten clogged in one of the ports.

If so replace the valve with a new one.

The cam shaft is jammed on one of the bolts on the bottom side

This is fairly simple this shaft can shift left or right if it has been impacted from the end. Normally this will bend the unit that connects to the air cylinder.

When this occurs the lower bolts connecting the cam to the steel stops will hit when the cam pivots and stop the full travel. Inspect each one while someone fires the solenoid manually.

One of the stops gets stuck

At times one of the lumber stops will drop below the top guide and has the potential to jam. This is not very common but has occurred when maintenance has been done on the lumber stop system.