Conveyor belt drives: SDT ultrasound and Artesis ESA on one site

Belt conveyors are the arteries of Kazakhstan's mining and processing complexes. Failure of a take-up or head pulley drive stops ore transport for hours and costs millions of tenge. The typical layout is motor → belt drive → gearbox → pulley. Every assembly gives its own diagnostic signal — but no single method sees everything.

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What fails in a belt drive

Assembly	Typical fault	Consequence
Belt	wear, delamination, slip	loss of traction, friction fire
Sheave	groove wear, eccentricity	vibration, belt slap
Pulley bearings	lubrication, spalling	seizure, belt break
Gearbox	gear teeth, bearings	line stoppage
Motor	unbalance, winding, bearing	cascading failure

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SDT ultrasound: hearing friction and impacts

The SDT340 with a contact or airborne sensor captures:

• Belt slip — an unstable ultrasonic floor, "chirping" under load.
• Incorrect tension — periodic impacts and beating.
• Pulley and gearbox bearings — rising level and impulses appearing in the TWF.
• Bearing lubrication — the LUBExpert mode prevents both over-greasing and starvation.

On slow-rotating pulleys ultrasound is often more reliable than vibration FFT.

Route: head and tail pulley, take-up, gearbox, coupling — 10–15 points per conveyor, 2–3 minutes per point.

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Artesis ESA: watching the motor and the load

Artesis e-MCM on the drive motor sees:

• pulley unbalance — through current modulation;
• motor bearing wear — before visible signs;
• overload / seizure — rising current and a shift in cos φ;
• winding faults — where reversals and starts are frequent.

The route-based AMT Pro lets you survey the whole conveyor fleet in one shift without sensors on every machine.

More detail: monitoring conveyors and fans.

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Combined deployment scheme

Motor              Belt/sheave         Gearbox/pulley
    │                    │                    │
    ▼                    ▼                    ▼
 Artesis ESA         SDT340 US           SDT340 US
 (control cabinet)  (friction, impacts) (bearings, gear teeth)

1. Artesis — continuously on 3–5 critical conveyors (crusher feed, dispatch).
2. SDT340 — a weekly route across all lines.
3. On an ESA alert — targeted ultrasound on the gearbox and pulley for localisation.

Method integration case: SDT340 + Artesis on one drive.

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Practical thresholds for maintenance

• Pulley bearing ultrasound trend +6 dB above the baseline — schedule a shutdown.
• Artesis: a move from green to amber status — a 4–8 week window for the repair.
• After a belt change — a new SDT baseline and a repeat AMT Pro test (unbalance after reassembly).

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Related material

• Belt conveyors — application page
• Monitoring mills and crushers at mining plants
• The 90-day SDT programme
• 18-month SDT + Artesis reliability roadmap