PRAB > News & Knowledge >

Steel Belt Conveyors

How to Choose the Right Industrial Scrap Conveyor System for Your Machining or Fabrication Operation

Walk through any production machining facility, stamping plant, or die-casting shop, and you will find one constant: metal scrap. The chips, turnings, stampings, and flash that accumulate on and around machine tools represent both a housekeeping challenge and a real cost center. Scrap conveyors are the circulatory system of efficient chip management — they move material away from the point […]

What Is the Best System for Aluminum Chip Recycling?

Aluminum chip recycling is one of the most effective ways manufacturers can recover value from machining operations. For companies machining aluminum, chips and turnings are not just waste—they are a reusable asset. Yet many facilities still lose profit by hauling wet chips, storing bulky swarf, paying excessive freight, or allowing reusable coolant to leave with the scrap. The best aluminum […]

How to Maximize Aluminum Scrap Value

Stop Leaving Money on the Table – How to Maximize Aluminum Scrap Value with PRAB’s Briquetting and Conveyor Systems Most metalworking operations think about aluminum scrap the same way they’ve always thought about it — as a byproduct to manage, not an asset to optimize. In previous years, that mindset was understandable. Today, with aluminum prices up more than 46% […]

Copper at $5/lb and Rising – How to Turn Your Machining Scrap Into a Significant Revenue Stream

There’s a calculation most manufacturing operations never run. It goes like this: take the machining scrap pounds of copper, brass, or bronze chips your facility generates per week, multiply by the current scrap price ($3.40–$5.10/lb depending on grade and cleanliness), subtract the discount your scrap dealer applies for oil contamination and loose bulk, and compare that to what you’d earn […]

The Other Metal Crisis- Why Copper Prices Are Rewriting the Rules for Manufacturers

Aluminum has dominated the commodity headlines this spring — but copper prices have been quietly building a more consequential story. While aluminum’s challenge is supply: mines capped, smelters disrupted, capacity maxed — copper’s challenge is something fundamentally different. It’s demand. Demand that no amount of new mine construction can keep up with, demand from industries that didn’t even exist a […]

Aluminum Prices Are Hitting Four-Year Highs – PRAB Solutions

If you machine aluminum for a living — or manage operations that do — the market news probably isn’t a surprise at this point. Aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange climbed to their highest levels since 2022 this spring, driven by a combination of geopolitical disruptions, structural supply constraints, and rising global demand. What that means in practical terms: […]

Modernizing the Closed-Loop Factory | Real-World Brownfield Integration in Metalworking

In real manufacturing environments, very few plants start from scratch. That’s a “Brownfield” integration vs. a “Greenfield” installation. Most facilities already operate with a mix of: Legacy conveyors Third-party shredder systems Standalone briquetting machines Decentralized CNC coolant filtration systems Older industrial oil water separators Fragmented wastewater treatment systems Capital equipment decisions were made over decades—often by different plant managers, under […]

Conveyor Solutions for Every Metalworking Scrap Stream

From Machine Discharge to Final Load-Out Metalworking scrap handling is not general material handling. Wet chips, bushy turnings, stamping skeletons, hot-die-cast scrap, abrasive fines, and coolant-saturated slugs behave differently from bulk dry material. Conveyor selection in these environments determines uptime, maintenance burden, coolant retention, and long-term cost per ton handled. PRAB is not simply a recycling equipment provider. PRAB engineers […]

Why “Too Expensive” and “Too Disruptive” Are Outdated Myths About Industrial Conveyors

How PRAB Steel Belt Conveyors Reframe Cost and Downtime as Strategic Advantages For many manufacturing leaders, the conversation around automated scrap handling still centers on two concerns: capital costs and installation downtime. That perception is understandable. But it is also increasingly outdated. Modern industrial conveyor projects—especially when engineered around modularity, phased implementation, and ROI-backed justification—look nothing like the “rip-and-replace” disruptions of […]

How to Choose the Right Metal Scrap Conveyor for Your Operation

What Is a Metal Scrap Conveyor? In today’s competitive manufacturing environment, efficient material handling isn’t optional; it’s essential. For metalworking facilities that handle chips, turnings, stamping off-cuts, and other scrap, the right conveyor system can drastically improve safety, uptime, and overall operational costs. But not all metal scrap conveyors are created equal. Choosing the right option depends on understanding scrap […]