Condition monitoring for every roller, from inside the roller.
Powered by the roller's own rotation, it measures bearing temperature, vibration and speed and reports them wirelessly, with no batteries or cabling.
A large underground mine runs 20,000 to 50,000 rollers, each containing two bearings that can fail.1 Any one of them can seize and stop the conveyor, and collapsed idler bearings started 46 % of the 105 underground conveyor fires in the NSW coal mines inspectorate's 15-year review.2
Estimated damage from a fire traced to one failed idler bearing, which inspection rounds had missed.3
Days between rounds, labour on every kilometre, and crews working beside moving belts.4
One snapshot of each roller per visit.
Every roller needs a clear line of sight from the camera or drone.
High overall cost, with heat or vibration traced to a stretch of conveyor instead of a single roller.
A battery or a cable for every sensor, mounted on the frame, away from the bearing.
Vendor lock-in, high unit cost and annual fees, with readings hours apart on large installations.
With a Sensor Seal in each roller, the dashboard shows which roller is failing and how its bearing is trending, so the crew can change it at the next planned stop.
A Sensor Seal takes the place of the roller's standard seal, at a unit cost low enough for every roller on a conveyor to carry one.
Each Sensor Seal reports as often as every 2 seconds, so the dashboard follows a bearing as it heats up.
The sensor module sits on the shaft beside the bearing and reads its temperature at the inner ring.
The software, on site or in the cloud, is free for the life of the product, however many rollers report to it.
As the roller turns, the magnet rotor spins past the generator coil and powers the sensor module. There is no battery to replace and no cable to run: whenever the roller turns, the Sensor Seal is measuring.
Select a part to zoom in
The Sensor Seal sits at the right-hand end of the roller, and the left-hand end carries a standard seal. Parts that turn with the roller are drawn in blue.
Turns with the roller and doubles as the rotating flinger of the labyrinth seal.
Wound in-house. It takes 20 mW from the roller's rotation, enough to power the sensor module's measurements and radio.
Electronics and radio, sealed to IP67, stationary on the shaft.
Pressed against the bearing's inner ring through a thermal pad.
Temperature, vibration and speed are read right beside it.
The conventional end: a metal flinger in place of the magnet rotor, and no electronics.
Sensor Seals are fitted in our factory to new Lorbrand rollers, in seven seal sizes for bearing bores from 25 to 60 mm. We develop the roller and the Sensor Seal together and optimise them as one.
Standard seal
S1 and S2 take the same measurements and report through a Lorbrand gateway to the on-site server or the cloud. They differ in how each reading reaches the gateway.
Each Sensor Seal reports straight to the gateway over long-range radio, for targeted monitoring of critical rollers spread across a site.
Sensor Seals pass readings from roller to roller along the conveyor, so one gateway serves a whole conveyor, up to 50,000 Sensor Seals. Further gateways along its length shorten the interval between readings.
Each Sensor Seal reports every 3.6 s
A bearing that starts to overheat shows on the dashboard within seconds, while there is still time to stop the belt before the roller seizes.
A sudden temperature rise reaches the crew within minutes, and the dashboard plots a detailed trend for every roller.
The dashboard tracks each bearing's long-term trend, and sudden faults show within the hour.
Trend monitoring for selected critical rollers. For a whole conveyor, add gateways or choose S2.
This networkTypical smart rollers on large installations
S2 figures come from network simulation running production firmware.†
The dashboard rates the Health of every roller, shows each conveyor in 3D, roller by roller, and keeps the full temperature, vibration and speed history of every Sensor Seal.
Free for the life of the productNo subscription, on site or in the cloud.
The full dashboard on your own network, with push notifications and every reading kept on site.
Standard industrial interfaces carry every reading into your SCADA, PLC or historian.
Adds built-in machine-learning Health analysis as well as email and SMS alerts. The data stays yours, with full export.
A supported phone or handheld identifies the roller after its labels have worn off, and reads its last measurement with the belt stopped.
We are committed to opening the Sensor Seal network to other roller manufacturers. The programme is in development. Once it launches, certified rollers from any maker will report to the same gateways and dashboard.
In developmentEvery Sensor Seal is designed by the Lorbrand team in South Africa, from the generator and the electronics to the firmware and the software that runs the network.
We wind the generator coils, solder the circuit boards, and assemble each Sensor Seal in our Centurion factory. Every roller fitted with Sensor Seals then goes through a running friction and operational test before it leaves.
| Series | Deep groove | Spherical | OD (mm) | ID (mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 6305 | 21305 | 62 | 25 |
| 30 | 6306 | 21306 | 72 | 30 |
| 35 | 6307 | 21307 | 80 | 35 |
| 40 | 6308 | 21308 | 90 | 40 |
| 45 | 6309 | 21309 | 100 | 45 |
| 50 | 6310 | 21310 | 110 | 50 |
| 60 | 6312 | 21312 | 130 | 60 |
