01Why belt is the default
The belt's virtue is forgiveness. A continuous surface supports parcels fully — no roller pitch to match to carton sizes, no gaps for small items to catch in, no flat-bottom requirement. Polybags, soft packages, small cartons and irregular items that defeat other conveying surfaces ride a belt without complaint, which is why belt sections carry the mixed streams that feed dimensioners and sorters.
Belts also control the parcel. On an incline, a belt's friction holds the load where a roller bed would let it slide back; at metering points, a belt section can start, stop and index parcels precisely for singulation and measurement. Most engineered sections in a DWS line — the dynamic measuring section itself — are belt sections with instruments built in.
02Belt conveyor lines in the Goodscan range
Goodscan supplies belt conveyors as engineered line sections: straight runs between stations, feed and discharge sections for DWS machines and sorters, and complete belt lines for warehouse transport duties. A run is specified by route, parcel profile and duty — belt width from the largest regular parcel, drive from the load and incline, section breaks where control or hand-off requires them.
The range boundary is deliberate and worth restating here: conveyor supply is complete machines and line sections for a site. Goodscan does not sell conveyor belts, rollers or components as parts — the conveyor systems page explains the whole-line supply model, and the roller conveyor page covers the cases where a roller bed is the better surface.
03Belt or roller? The short answer
Choose belt for mixed, soft, small or inclined duty, and wherever parcels must be metered precisely. Choose roller for flat-bottom cartons and totes on the flat, for accumulation where parcels queue under low pressure, and around manual workstations where the surface doubles as a work feed. Real lines use both, section by section — which is how Goodscan lines are designed, with the surface following the parcel and the task at each stage.
Maintenance thinking differs by surface, too: a belt is one wearing surface inspected along its run, while a roller bed is many small components, any of which can be swapped in minutes. Neither is 'lower maintenance' in the abstract — the right question is which failure pattern your operation would rather manage, and the layout proposal addresses it section by section.