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Monday 8am - 4:45pm Tuesday 8am - 4:45pm Wednesday 8am - 4:45pm Thursday 8am - 4:45pm Friday 8am - 4:45pm

Industrial Kinetics, Inc.

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Downers Grove, IL
Industrial Kinetics, Inc.

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Industrial Kinetics is a manufacturer and systems integrator of industrial conveyor systems. Visit our site: http://www.iki.com/

10/29/2026

Thirteen pumpkins. One Golden Pumpkin. Zero mercy.

This week Industrial Kinetics held its first pumpkin decorating contest, and our team showed up with a range of talent we did not see coming. The lineup included a Día de los Mu***os Catrina surrounded by marigolds, a hand-carved Predator, a pumpkin being eaten by a bigger pumpkin, a mummy, a spider-web masterpiece painted on black, an IK logo carving, and at least one pumpkin wearing a coworker’s face.

Employees voted, and the winner was built by someone who knows his way around a shop floor. Randall, one of our welders, created a welder pumpkin complete with a welding hood, steel arms, and metal boots. He takes home the inaugural Golden Pumpkin trophy, which we expect to become the most coveted piece of hardware in the building.

The same people who build heavy-duty conveyors every day also brought this level of craft to a gourd. Congratulations, Randall, and thank you to everyone who entered and voted. Next year’s competition starts now.

Leave a comment with the number of pumpkin that you think should have won.

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10/12/2026

Our operations manager, Jerry Glikis, just put our team through forklift operator training and evaluation at our Downers Grove facility.

Why is a conveyor manufacturer posting about forklifts?

Every conveyor we build is staged, loaded, and loaded on an outbound truck by a lift truck before it ever reaches your dock. The same operators move steel, components, and finished sections through our shop all day.

How we emphasize safety inside our own building says a lot about how carefully your equipment gets handled on the way to you.

A few things Jerry built into the program that plant and operations managers will recognize:

Classroom plus hands-on evaluation. OSHA’s powered industrial truck standard (29 CFR 1910.178) requires employers to certify each operator and re-evaluate performance at least every three years.

We treat that as the minimum.

Training on the equipment and in the aisles our people use, including pedestrian traffic, alongside conveying equipment staged to ship, and in our inventory racks.

The payoff for this training is the same one you track in your own plant: fewer incidents, less damaged product, less unplanned downtime, and equipment that arrives in the condition it left the floor.

The reason we take forklift training this seriously is the same reason we take everything else seriously. A manufacturing facility that is disciplined about how it moves a load is disciplined about how it welds a frame, squares a bed, tags a shipment, and documents a build.

Those habits come from the same place.

You cannot switch them on for the parts of the job the customer sees and off for the parts they never will.

So, when a conveyor from Industrial Kinetics arrives at your dock, the condition it shows up reflects how it was handled every single day it spent in our building.

Jerry and his team are the ones who make that true, one pallet at a time.

10/02/2026

Industrial Kinetics was founded on January 20, 1969 with a simple premise: conveyor systems should be engineered around real operating conditions, not forced from a catalog. We've engineered and manufactured some very unique conveyors over the years, but a purple conveyor might be a first for us. The paper manufacturing sheet showed the color as lilac, some of think it's more like that purple mascot for McDonald's. You can read more about our engineering services, including conveyors in colors other than blue and gray, at the link in the comments.

09/24/2026

Building a conveyor system and building a taco 🌮 have more in common than you might think. Every component has a job, the order matters, and nobody wants the finished product to fall apart before it gets where it is going. 🙂

Taco Thursday gave our team a chance to enjoy the edible kind of assembly process together. Great food, a little time away from the daily routine, and conversations with coworkers from parts of the company we do not always see.

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09/21/2026

A robot that can be deployed in days can still spend weeks waiting on the material handling around it.

That was one of the more important implications coming out of IMTS 2026 in Chicago.

KUKA highlighted automation systems intended to reduce programming time for applications such as machine tending. Universal Robots previewed PolyScope X, with a similar emphasis on faster application deployment and less specialized programming.

As robot deployment gets easier, the surrounding system interfaces matter more.

For plant engineers and integrators, that means evaluating the conveyor and material handling layer at the same time as the robotic cell.

Robot-ready conveyor design requires decisions such as:
• Infeed and outfeed elevations that match robotic reach and load geometry
• Transfer designs that consistently present loads in the required position and orientation
• Clear travel and docking space for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)
• Controls architecture that coordinates with the cell’s Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
• Accumulation behavior that protects cycle time when upstream or downstream equipment pauses
• Service access that does not interfere with guarding, robot envelopes, or material flow

When those variables are addressed late, the conveyor can become the constraint that erases the deployment advantage gained at the robot.

Automation should be engineered as a complete throughput system from the start.

As plants evaluate their next automation investments, the question is broader than how quickly a robot can be programmed. It is whether every interface around that robot is engineered to support the same deployment speed, uptime, and future expansion.

That is where system-level engineering discipline matters.

09/04/2026

Labor Day Update: Industrial Kinetics will be closed on Monday, Sept 7th. A big thank you to our team for their hard work and dedication. Enjoy the long weekend with your families! We're back on Tuesday, ready to tackle your conveyor needs.

08/25/2026

From Mike Raley, Director of the Oregon Acoustic Research Laboratory

"How do you build a box inside a box? Very carefully!

Last week the construction team at the Oregon Acoustic Research Lab (OARL) put in place the giant steel beams that will support the 30,000 lb. specimen carrier currently being designed and fabricated by Industrial Kinetics.

The specimen carrier is a hollow steel frame that will be filled with concrete once its lifted into place on these beams. Before an acoustical test, the specimen carrier will sit on additional beams outside the test chambers and a floor/ceiling assembly will be lifted into the specimen carrier using our 15-ton bridge crane. The assembly will then be sealed in the carrier and prepped for testing. Once the assembly is ready, the carrier will drive along the beams and into the slot between the two 14" concrete slabs that form the floor of the upper chamber and ceiling of the lower chamber.

This was very much a nervous-parent moment for me as I watched them thread the needle between the scaffolding and the roof beams! There was very little room for error and these beams had to line up just right with the threaded rod already inserted in the CMU walls. Thankfully, it all worked!

Many thanks to the folks at Maxim Crane Works, LP, Andersen Construction, and the rest of the team for a job well done!

Note: The video is at 2x speed."

08/14/2026

Conveyor bottlenecks rarely start with the conveyor itself.

What we often see is a small issue upstream or downstream creating a much bigger operational problem: inconsistent product flow, accumulation, repeated stops, or teams spending time reacting instead of addressing the underlying cause.

That’s what makes conveyor issues tricky. The visible slowdown is often only the symptom.

The more useful question is what the bottleneck is revealing about the broader system: equipment condition, process timing, product handling, maintenance practices, or how different parts of the line interact.

We recently published a blog post, “How to Address Common Conveyor Bottleneck & Issues,” that looks at some of the common problems that can disrupt conveyor performance and what teams should consider when addressing them.

If conveyor slowdowns, recurring jams, or other line issues are affecting your operation, it’s worth a read.

The link is in the comments.

08/05/2026

The IKI Parts Portal gives integrators a practical customer-support feature to include with an Industrial Kinetics conveyor system.

At ikiparts.com, equipment owners can scan a QR code or enter the conveyor serial number to:

• Find parts associated with their equipment
• Confirm the correct part number
• Enter the quantity required
• Submit an RFQ directly to their integrator and Industrial Kinetics

The integrator receives the part number, quantity, equipment details, and customer contact information needed to service the request.

That means less time researching older equipment, fewer phone calls and email chains, and a more direct path to the correct replacement part.

The customer gets an easier support experience. The integrator stays involved in the after-sale parts relationship and post-sale revenue stream.

Learn how the IKI Parts Portal can support your next integration project at ikiparts.com.

07/09/2026

This accumulation conveyor is one of our Motor Driven Roller (MDR) conveyors with a Belt-over Roller bed. It's lined up along with other pieces of an entire system.

But which conveyor goes where isn't a given. How each piece gets chosen is where the real work happens.

The wrong accumulation method can quietly turn a clean layout into a throughput problem.

That’s why conveyor selection matters long before equipment hits the floor.

This motor-driven roller (MDR), belt-over-roller (BOR) accumulation conveyor is a good example. For the right case or tote application, MDR zones provide controlled start/stop logic while the belt-over-roller surface supports smooth product handling across the conveyor bed.

But the technology only works when it matches the load characteristics, required rates, accumulation behavior, transfer points, and downstream controls.

At Industrial Kinetics, we look at conveyor selection as an engineering decision, not a catalog choice. Sometimes MDR/BOR is the right fit. Sometimes the application calls for a different drive method, bed design, roller spacing, or control approach.

The goal is the same: stable product flow, serviceable equipment, and fewer surprises once the system is running.

This is where engineering discipline matters.

Address

2535 Curtiss Street
Downers Grove, IL
60515

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 4:45pm
Tuesday	8am - 4:45pm
Wednesday	8am - 4:45pm
Thursday	8am - 4:45pm
Friday	8am - 4:45pm

Website

http://www.iki.com/

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