Tunnel size is the first spec on every X-ray datasheet and the one buyers most often get wrong — in both directions. Four questions sort it out.
1. What's the biggest thing you'll actually screen?
Not the biggest thing you can imagine — the biggest thing your policy requires through the tunnel. Measure it in its natural scanning position. A handbag-and-laptop reception needs ~504 × 320 mm (HS 5030 class). A visitor checkpoint taking daypacks and cabin bags needs the 610 × 410 mm class (HS 6040) — the world's default checkpoint size for good reason. Hold luggage pushes you to 810 × 660 mm; pallets and freight to 1450–1820 mm tunnels.
2. Will it physically get into the building?
The question that kills more orders than price. The machine has to pass doorways, corridors, lifts and floor loadings on the way to its final position. The HS 5030 EVO2 is deliberately designed to fit a standard 825 mm door frame; larger systems may need doors removed, glazing out, or a crane. We survey the route free before quoting — take that offer from any supplier, or budget for surprises.
3. What throughput do you really need?
Belt speed matters less than re-scan rate. A single-view machine at a busy checkpoint generates re-scans whenever items overlap ambiguously; a dual-view (DV) machine images two angles in one pass and clears the same bag first time. If your queue peaks hard — venue doors, shift changes, flight banks — dual view usually beats a second machine on cost and floor space.
4. Buying for today, or for the policy you'll have in two years?
Screening scope creeps: today's handbags become tomorrow's parcels. Going one class up sometimes makes sense — but so does hiring for the peak season instead of owning the worst case. And every machine we supply is AI-ready, so raising your detection standard later is a retrofit, not a replacement.
The mistakes we see most
- Buying the giant tunnel "just in case" — paying in capital, floor space and power for capacity that never gets used.
- Buying too small to save money — then hand-searching everything that doesn't fit, which costs more within a year.
- Ignoring conveyor height and roller tables — ergonomics decide real-world throughput more than specs do.
- Forgetting the route in — see question 2. Always question 2.
We keep a free visual guide with every tunnel drawn to scale and what fits through each — the RedteQ tunnel size guide — or send us a photo of what you need to screen and we'll size it for you, usually same day.