Talk:Roller chain

ladder chains look and operate very much like roller chains, as in the use of sprocket wheels.

Nowadays, the main use seems to be the food industry - different from roller chains, ladder chains, each link entirely made of wire, are easier to clean and disinfect than roller chains that have unreachable nooks and crevices. Rotisserie chicken ovens, for example.

Ladder chains used to be very common a hundred years ago (my knowledge of these, even finding the right word) came from repairing an ancient weaving loom. I would assume that the simplicity of bending wire compared to the many parts in roller chain made entire sense before more active and efficient automated manufacturing processes were developed.

A variant of ladder chains is chain belts. If we see the normal ladder chain as 1x, the chain belts are n times x. Chain belts are used as conveyor belts, often with a stronger wire ladder belt forming each edge, that runs on sprockets gears. The benefit of the wide openings achieved by the use of wire can be especially beneficial for certain uses, like machines designed to coat confectionery with chocolate. Again, this also allows the kind of cleaning necessary for food-related machinery.

There is an article for the Chain Belt Company, without much information on the actual device.

YamaPlos talk 15:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)