Pneumatic Tube Carriers

For transporting packages via pneumatic tube systems, carriers—often referred to as pods by users—are the capsules that convey the items. Carriers can be made of plastic or metal. When considering a pneumatic tube system, the first decision is determining the appropriate carrier size for the package or object being transported. This decision will dictate the correct tube system size. While soft packages can be compressed to fit into the carrier chamber and documents can be rolled or overlapped, boxed or packaged items require more careful consideration.

Carriers can be supplied in a range of models, lengths, colours and security.

We have standard carriers in all popular sizes or other models with additional features:

Aerocom Pneumatic Tube carriers are manufactured in Germany to the highest of standards. They can be supplied with either Velcro or Felt glide bands. Larger carriers are fitted with drive rings to allow heavier loads and assist with air cushion braking when arriving at stations.

Glide bands and drive rings are in contact with the inner wall of the transport tube, so do suffer mileage related wear just as car tyres do. Aerocom stock spare parts for carrier refurbishment, which can be performed on-site or at our workshop. We also supply DIY kits.

Cleansing carriers is just a simple washing process, they can be immersed in water with a sterilising solution and scrubbed. Some larger sites install a domestic dishwasher which does a marvellous job and is very efficient.

Pneumatic tube systems in hospitals demand full traceability for sample and pharmaceutical conveyance. RFID implant chips are provided as standard in conjunction with scanning antennae on all send and receive stations. The Aerocom AC3000 and AC4000 series of operating systems have dedicated TagEdit software specifically to support carrier tracking.

Each carrier has a unique transponder ID and site-specific number which is logged every time the carrier passes an antenna, this includes when transferring across zones at a linear coupler. Should the carrier tracking software detect a transaction has sent a logged carrier, and a different RFID code is scanned at the receiving station, the system will purge to find the lost carrier and send all carriers to the designated master stations and automatically trigger a fault report.