What to monitor
- Drive motor & gearbox — vibration, temperature and motor current catch bearing, alignment and gearbox faults weeks before failure (the same physics as any vibration monitoring).
- Pulley & idler bearings — temperature and vibration on head, tail and drive pulleys (and critical idlers) flag a bearing heading for seizure — and a hot idler is also a fire risk worth catching.
- Belt drift / mistracking — sensors detect the belt starting to track off-centre before it damages itself or the structure.
- Belt rip & slip — where the belt and load justify it, rip detection and speed/slip monitoring protect a very expensive belt.
- Safety & run status — pull-cord, blocked-chute and run/stop status integrated into the same picture for context on every alarm.
How to scope it for payback
- Rank conveyors by cost of failure. The long overland, the one feeding the mill, the one buried where no one inspects it — start where a stop hurts most and access is worst.
- Baseline each machine. Capture normal behaviour, then set thresholds per drive and pulley, not from a generic table — the difference between a useful alert and alarm noise.
- Route alerts to an owner and a work order. A reading that doesn't become a planned intervention changes nothing; close the loop into your maintenance process.
- Design for the environment. Sensors rated for dust and heat, edge buffering for load shedding, and trends simple enough that your existing team acts without a full-time analyst.
- Prove it, then extend. A handful of critical conveyors that demonstrably avoid one breakdown funds rolling the same recipe out across the plant.
What "good" looks like
A working conveyor-monitoring programme isn't measured in sensors fitted; it's measured in stoppages avoided. Within a few months you should see a short, trusted alert stream (not noise), at least one bearing or drive fault caught and planned out of a breakdown, and crews who act on a hot-bearing alert before it becomes a belt fire. If instead you have a wall of alarms nobody reads, the scoping was wrong — and more sensors will make it worse, not better.
This is part of how we deliver mining and asset & condition monitoring on the in-house addaNet platform — criticality-first, decision-led, and built to survive dust, heat and load shedding. Conveyor health sits alongside your other rotating assets and your safety data in one picture, so reliability isn't a silo.
What fails on a conveyor — and the signal that catches it
| Failure | Signal | Why it matters |
|---|
| Drive bearing / gearbox failure | Vibration and temperature on the drive | The stoppage that takes a shift; fire risk |
| Idler seizure | Temperature along the frame; acoustic | Belt damage and the classic conveyor fire cause |
| Belt drift / mistracking | Drift switches; edge position | Spillage, edge damage, structure wear |
| Belt slip | Drive vs tail-pulley speed mismatch | Heat at the drive pulley; lost throughput |
| Blockage / chute overload | Motor current spike; chute level | Belt tear, spillage, downtime |
| Belt tear / rip | Rip-detection loops; sudden load change | Catastrophic cost if it reaches the head |
Frequently asked questions
What should we monitor on a conveyor?
The failure modes that actually stop it: the drive motor and gearbox (vibration, temperature, current), head/tail/drive pulley and critical idler bearings (temperature and vibration), belt drift, and — where justified — rip and slip, plus pull-cord and run status for context. You don't instrument every idler; you instrument what takes the conveyor down.
Can monitoring prevent a belt fire?
It significantly reduces the risk. A seizing idler or pulley bearing runs hot before it fails, and continuous temperature and vibration monitoring flags that heat as an alert — so crews can intervene before friction starts a fire. It's one of the highest-value reasons to monitor critical pulleys.
Do we need to instrument every idler on a long overland?
No — that would be expensive and noisy. Focus on the drive, the head and tail pulleys, and the few critical or known-problem idlers, plus belt-drift detection at key points. Rank by cost and access, start there, and extend only where the payback holds.
How is this different from walking the conveyor with a thermal camera?
Manual inspection gives a snapshot when someone walks the line; continuous monitoring gives the trend and the alert the moment a bearing starts heating — including overnight and on the inaccessible runs no one inspects often. The two complement each other, but only continuous monitoring catches a fault that develops between walks.
Will it work in dusty, hot conditions and through load shedding?
Yes, if designed for it. Use sensors rated for dust and heat, and edge devices that buffer locally and sync when power and connectivity return — so a hot-bearing trend isn't lost during an outage. Designing for the environment is essential on a mine or plant conveyor.
Tired of conveyor surprises?
Send us your critical conveyor list. We'll tell you honestly which drives and pulleys are worth monitoring — and which aren't — before you spend on a single sensor.