Industrial tubular drag conveyors are fully enclosed, gentle, and energy-efficient systems. They efficiently transport powders, granules, flakes, pellets, and abrasive or fragile materials. These systems move product through a sealed tube using circular discs attached to a chain or cable, ensuring low dust, low product degradation, and reliable performance in demanding applications.
An industrial tubular drag conveyor system is built around three primary components: a heavy-duty chain or cable, precision-engineered discs, and a fully enclosed tube. This design ensures that materials are moved gently and consistently, preventing the degradation often found in high-speed systems.
Our industrial tubular drag chain conveyor system is engineered for continuous, dust-tight operation with flexible routing in multiple planes. For heavy-duty or high-wear environments, tubular drag chain conveyor provides enhanced durability and longer service life. Every solution is developed using proven tubular drag conveyor design principles to match your required capacity, material characteristics, and plant layout.
We supply industrial-grade systems comparable to leading global standards, Whether you need a custom compact single-path layout or a complex multi-direction system, our tubular drag conveyors deliver consistent flow, minimal maintenance, and excellent reliability across a wide range of industries.
As a specialist supplier in Australia, we provide high-quality tubular drag conveying systems trusted across food, chemical, mining, and environmental industries. Our systems are selected for reliability, performance, and long service life in both simple and complex plant layouts.
Our tubular drag conveyors are designed for smooth, quiet, and low-wear operation. With gentle material handling, enclosed conveying, and robust construction, they deliver superior performance in applications where product integrity, cleanliness, or safety is critical. Optional chain-drag configurations provide additional strength for abrasive or heavy materials, ensuring long-term durability and reduced total operating cost.
For industries processing abrasive or high density bulk materials, our heavy duty drag conveyors are engineered with reinforced chains and hardened components to provide superior durability and longer service life under demanding operational loads.
• Convey product in a completely sealed system.
The sprocket drive pulls a heavy-duty chain and flight assembly inside a fully enclosed pipe, preventing dust, degradation, and contamination while ensuring gentle conveying.
• Use less energy than other conveyors.
Our tubular drag conveyor design requires low horsepower and maintains a steady, efficient drag—helping reduce unit energy consumption compared to other conveyor types.
• Move challenging materials.
Handle high-moisture, abrasive, blended, friable, compact, large-particle, or smear-prone materials without compromising product quality.
• One conveyor does the work of many.
A tubular drag conveyor can be configured to run vertically, horizontally, at angles, and around corners—flexible inlets/outlets allow many layout options.
• Our Chain conveyors.
High torque, low-speed design with the ability to start and stop while fully loaded!
A conveyor that prioritizes clean and delicate transport without sacrificing reliability.
Our tubular cable Conveyor carefully transports food products, including nuts, coffee, frozen foods, snack foods, and more, without causing damage, thus preserving product integrity. Our conveyor ensures full compliance with food safety regulations by featuring 100% FDA-compliant flights, ferrules, cables, and coatings.
The fully sealed system with integral drain points enables water, foam and chemical cleaning methods.
Wipe disk/Scaper disk/Sponge disk options are available.
Added after the last discharge point to mechanically brush off the cable and disks.
A strategically placed device that uses compressed air to blow off accumulating fines from the disks.
Please explore more on Hapman CablePro
• Self-Cleaning Discharge Gate: Prevent material from getting trapped with this exclusive discharge gate design. The gate opens and closes flat against the convex pipe, eliminating trapped material.
• Brush Box: Effectively remove sticky material from flights and chains with dual spinning brushes that prevent carryover, and facilitate full material discharge from the conveyor. Other cleaning options are available, such as an air knife and vibration box.
• Auto Tensioner: Air-over-hydraulic auto tensioner mitigates unplanned downtime and dramatically reduces maintenance. Built-in sensors automatically keep the chain at optimum performance, even under varying loads.
• Flight and Chain Configurations: Our engineers will select the correct chain and flight design combination to meet your specific process and material requirements. We offer link and pin-type chains conveyors, which are less prone to fatigue and wear, and stretch less than steel cables. Also available are Hapman’s exclusive rivetless and seal-pin chain options to fit a wider array of applications.
Total investment for an industrial tubular drag conveyor depends on several key project specifications. To provide the most accurate quote for your needs, we consider factors such as the total conveying distance, the number of required inlets and discharge points, specific material characteristics (abrasiveness or moisture content), and any custom sanitary or explosion-proof requirements.
Ready to discuss your specific requirements? Contact our team today for a tailored quote.
Integrate the Tubular Chain conveyor with other bulk material equipment from Noggrann like the Flexible Screw Conveyor, BULK BAG UNLOADERS, BULK BAG FILLERS, VACUUM CONVEYORS or SCREW FEEDERS for a complete conveying system.
Chain-pull is the principal design consideration. It is a measure of the cumulative resistance of a circuit to the action of pulling a conveyor chain assembly through it. Fundamentally, the chain-pull calculation is used to determine whether a circuit 'works'—to prove that the cumulative inherent resistance does not exceed the strength of the chain itself. However, even when the circuit technically ‘works’, remember that as chain-pull increases, so does wear, power consumption, and cost (both initial purchase prices and maintenance costs over the lifetime of the conveyor).
A tubular drag conveyor is a mechanical conveying system that uses a chain or cable linked with evenly spaced circular discs (flights) to gently drag bulk materials through an enclosed pipe or tube. It is used to move materials horizontally, vertically, or at an incline while protecting them from contamination
Tubular drag conveyors can handle a wide variety of materials, including powders, granules, pellets, chips, and even slurry. They are particularly effective with delicate or friable materials (like coffee beans, cereals, or pellets) because the gentle motion. The high-torque, low-speed mode of operation makes these conveyors a natural candidate. The conveyor's design is optimized to minimize the degradation of friable materials.
Wear management in tubular drag conveyors is achieved by focusing on two main goals: minimizing friction and reducing stress on components. Several simple operational and design strategies are used to maximize the equipment's lifespan:
| Feature | Chain Conveyor | Cable Conveyor |
|---|---|---|
| Pulling Mechanism | Steel or stainless steel chain with links, pins, and bushings. | Coated, flexible stainless steel cable. |
| Torque | High torque, low speed devices. | Low torque. |
| Load Handling | Can start/stop with a full load. | Must be empty during start/stop sequences. |
| Conveying Distance | Suitable for much longer distances. | Suitable for shorter distances. |
| Sanitary / Cleaning | Many joints/connections; difficult to clean. | Few joints; easy for CIP/SIP cleaning. |
| Stretch | No significant stretch. | Stretches; requires frequent adjustment and replacement. |
| Bends | More bends and complex layouts are available. | Intermediate corner-turns via pulley boxes; potential for material accumulation. |
| Parts Serviceable | All individual parts are serviceable/replaceable. | Requires replacement of the whole cable and flights if the cable breaks. |
| Equipment Cost | More expensive. | Cheaper upfront cost. |
The key difference lies in the method of movement and enclosure.
Auger/Screw: Uses a rotating screw to push material through a U-trough or tube, which can cause higher friction, potential dust leakage, and material shearing.
Tubular Drag: Uses a sealed pipe and discs/chain to gently drag product, offering dust-tight containment and low degradation.
Chain snapping during a loaded start occurs when an underspecified conveyor attempts to move a heavy or settled column of material, exceeding the chain's maximum tensile strength.
To prevent these tensile failures, Noggrann utilizes high-torque, low-speed patented link and pin-type chain designs capable of starting and stopping while fully loaded. Combined with our air-over-hydraulic auto-tensioner, the system dynamically absorbs high start-up stresses, preventing chain fatigue and snapping in extreme operating environments.
While cable conveyors are well-suited for fragile food-grade products, high-temperature and highly abrasive industrial materials require a heavy-duty round-link or rivetless chain system. Sealed steel cables can suffer from localized jacket degradation under extreme heat, leading to hidden core failures.
An engineered, hardened steel chain layout provides superior resistance to component thinning and high chain-pull demands. For extreme environments like the Pilbara, the internals should be custom-treated to withstand abrasive friction and thermal expansion without suffering from accelerated wear.
Yes. Replacing an entire industrial conveyor system requires significant capital expenditure (CAPEX) and extensive plant downtime. If your existing pipework and drive boxes are still structurally sound, Noggrann can perform a surgical internal retrofit.
As demonstrated in our Pilbara mining refinery case study, we successfully recovered the client’s existing infrastructure and only replaced the failing internals with heavy-duty Hapman round-link chains and treated sprockets. This eliminated a catastrophic 5-day failure cycle while saving the client the cost of a full infrastructure overhaul.
In heavy-duty or mining refinery environments, chain tracking issues and drive cog jumping are typically caused by an accumulation of high-density materials, uneven tensile stress, or thermal expansion. When standard hardware is exposed to extreme temperatures or high chain-pull requirements under full load, the chain stretches unevenly, causing misalignment with the drive sprocket.
Noggrann solves this by retrofitting systems with custom-engineered Hapman chain and sprocket assemblies that are precisely matched to the material characteristics and operating temperatures, ensuring perfect drive cog tracking even during continuous operation.