A few tips for maintaining conveyors

Conveyor systems are one of my favorite areas when performing RCM analysis.

They are all different, and there is always a lot of scope for improvement.

I thought I would share a few of the changes that come about regularly with the readership in the hope that you may be able to make rapid and worthwhile changes to your conveyor maintenance regimes.

(Without getting too much into some of the great technologies out there for inline checking of conveyors)

Thermography (Infra red) for conveyor rollers

This is a great idea for a (say) once a month application. Increases the likelihood of detecting failing rollers, as opposed to the listen and wing it methods, and increases conveyor life by reducing parasitic drag.

Parasitic drag is what occurs when the rollers and idlers seize and place load on the conveyor. The wear will continue until it wears through the conveyor carcass, at which point the life of the conveyor will be dramatically reduced.

Operator Involvement

Where there are a need for daily inspections, as there are often on conveyors, then the operators should be the ones doing this. If you think about it there is no need to waste maintenance time when operators can do this as a mater of course.

Some standard daily procedures would include:

• Visual inspection of rollers and idlers to make sure they are spinning. Listen for signs of bearing noise. (Where infra red is not able to be adopted)

• Check the length of the conveyor for tears in the belt. Where the tear is (say) over one inch in length and down to the cores then it must be reported to the planner for repairs to be scheduled. (This can be less relevant here tramp magnets are in place)

• Daily check of wear plates. There are always obvious signs of wear plats that are on their way out. This check also serves as a chance to review the inside of hoppers viaually to note any damage that may have occurred. 

And the list goes on.

The real key to implementing daily inspections, and to guaranteeing operator involvement...is training.

Not classroom training, or the common fill out the form and get passed out type of training. 

But real, in the field, practical training. These people, operators, are generally practical people. They appreciate a practical approach.

Walk the belt with them. Show them directly what they need to be looking for. Show them the process for filling out work orders or work requests, and try to give them  an idea of what the limits are for reviews like this. 

Then work with them for a couple of morning as they run through the checks. From there, it is all downhill!

Just a few things that help me regularly when I run through these analyses. Has helped to transform more than one mine site over the years also. Particularly when the operations people get involved with the RCM analysis process.