Contact ultrasound and vibration monitoring of conveyor idler rollers. Each zone graded Healthy, Plan, Watch or Alert against its own baseline, giving your team more confidence in a stop-or-run call.
Sensor nodes clamp magnetically to the stringer and listen to the bearings through the steel, the way a fitter listens with a spanner to the ear. One cable carries power and data to a controller at the end of the section. The controller keeps the raw recordings and sends the results to your server. How it senses.
Four measurements per node: contact ultrasound, vibration, audio band and temperature, all picked up through the steel. Steel-to-steel coupling through a magnetic clamp; no drilling, no change to the roller or the frame. Designed to meet IP67.
One per conveyor section. Powers the nodes, runs the measurements, stores every waveform locally and sends results over LTE-M. No connection to site IT or OT.
A server in Australia for your site alone, or a machine on your premises. Triage list, trends, playback of any recording, and alerts (SMS and email in pilot).
A zone is the stretch of conveyor one node listens to, identified by its node ID: a single frame or several, depending on configuration. Each zone is graded against its own baseline, so a section that has always been noisy is not flagged for being noisy, only for changing. Plan comes from contact ultrasound alone, the stage of failure most other monitoring methods cannot see.
No signal above its own baseline. No action.
Contact ultrasound elevated: the first sign of bearing failure, before it can be heard or felt. A scheduling grade: order a roller and put the change into a planned shut. Not urgent.
Periodic vibration: regular impacts once pitting starts, or shifts that point to roller shell damage or imbalance. A vigilance grade: keep a close eye on it, as it can move to Alert quickly.
High vibration and sound. This is where idlers usually get flagged today, by sound and heat on the belt walk. Your team gets the trend and the recording; the decision stays with them.
Unknown: node offline, faulted or still baselining. Never shown as Healthy.
Idler bearings give a contact ultrasound warning well before they become audible or hot. By the time they are flagged by sound and heat, the choices left are to stop and miss the production target, or run on and risk the belt. Triage is built to pick up the early signal, so the change can be scheduled for a planned shut.
24/7 monitoring of every zone on the section, not a walk every few weeks. Zones are measured between walks, not only on the day of one.
Independent of site IT and OT. Own power, own link, own server. No change to the asset, no software on your network.
Install on a short section to start, then chain sections together. Nodes are added along the same cable.
The system is built in independent segments, so a long overland is a staged rollout of the same unit rather than a single large build.
About 250 m per controller in the current design. A long overland is several segments, added one at a time.
Set from pilot results: from one node per frame to one every two frames or wider, traded against how precisely a failing idler can be located.
Fitted during a planned shut or a scheduled isolation of the section. No drilling, welding or roller changes. A health check at commissioning confirms each node's coupling to the steel.
For a pilot the controller runs on battery with its own mobile link, so no site power or network is needed. Longer deployments can use solar or site power.
The controller reports over 4G (LTE-M). A satellite link is being evaluated for sites without mobile coverage.
Nodes stay in place when rollers are changed, so monitoring carries on through change-outs.
The hardware is built and working on the bench; pilots on operating conveyors are being scheduled. We would rather you knew before a pilot than found out during one.
Current design values. Environmental ratings are design targets, not yet tested.
| Node | |
|---|---|
| Measurements | Contact ultrasound, vibration, audio band, temperature |
| Capture | Simultaneous short captures across groups of nodes, or long streaming captures from a single node |
| Housing | 16 mm square 316L stainless tube, potted |
| Mounting | Magnetic clamp to the stringer; no drilling |
| Environmental | Designed to meet IP67 |
| Bus | |
| Cable | One cable for power and data, each node on its own tap, so a failed node does not break the line |
| Interface | RS-485 multi-drop over twisted pair |
| Data rate | Length and site dependent, under evaluation |
| Segment length | About 250 m per controller |
| Controller | |
| Backhaul | 4G (LTE-M); satellite under evaluation |
| Local storage | Raw recordings kept on the controller |
| Measurement interval | Default 60 min, adjustable |
| Power | Battery for pilots; solar or site power for permanent installs |
| Input voltage | 12 to 15 V standard, 24 V available |
| Battery life | Duty cycle dependent, under evaluation |
| Data | |
| Reporting | Grades, trends and audio playback on a server set up for each client |
| Raw data | Stored on site, downloadable on request |
| Site systems | No connection to site IT or OT |
