Autonomous sensorized rollers for industrial conveyors for failure early detection
Conveyors are the most common system to move materials in different sectors like: mining, steel, chemical, thermal, etc...
Fuel prices and difficult access places make conveyors the best option not only in terms of speed or convenience but mainly
due to economical reasons.
However, conveyors suffer from a pandemic disease: their rollers. Every conveyor is mainly composed of three kind of
components: rollers, belt and drums. The rollers are the main critical part, suffering from corrosion, abrasion and the contact
of the materials which are being transported make the rollers collapse. Their lifespan is very dependent on the environment
and the materials carried, but the results are always fatal: belt deterioration and sudden stop of the whole conveyor. Taking
into account that the average conveyor length is more than 10Kms (reaching in some cases 100Kms) and that many
conveyors operate 24x7, the economic losses of an unexpected stop can reach to millions of Euros.

Nowadays, in order to diagnose a possible roller failure and detect it as soon as possible there are several methods, among
them the most widespread is a visual test. These tests involve several inaccuracies as the measures are done by ear which
is open to human errors, lack of precision and obviously lack of objectivity between different cases.

ULMA Conveyor Components is an SME devoted to the design, manufacturing and commercialization of conveyor
components, in the year 2012 the R&D department started a new project to offer their customers the best in class rollers to
avoid unexpected stops. The developed rollers (GaZiMo), with the first prototype recently implemented and tested,
incorporates sensors, a communication module, an autonomous energy generation and a new design in order to obtain in
real time the technical parameters, the general status, and their exact position in the conveyor in order to detect and replace
a failed roller before it collapses and provokes a complete stop of the system.