Conveyor Belt Cleaner Monitoring: Inside the FM8 Conveyor Cleaner Health App
Most primary belt cleaner mining sites still manage blade changeouts on a calendar, or worse, on a phone call from the cleanup crew. The FM8 Conveyor Cleaner Health App (FM8-CCH) replaces that guesswork with measured wear, a projected changeout date for every cleaning blade, and a stock forecast that tells procurement when to order. This article walks through what the tool does and where it earns its keep for site teams, reliability engineers and superintendents.
01The problem it solves
Carryback and blade wear are predictable. The way most operations track them is not. A maintenance manager knows roughly how long an FM8 Super XHD primary blade lasts, but "roughly" is what produces both failures: a blade run to destruction that lets carryback chew idlers and foul the return run, or a perfectly serviceable blade pulled early during a window "while we're in there." Both decisions waste money, and neither is backed by a wear rate anyone has written down.
Belt cleaner blade life depends on belt speed, tonnage, splice frequency, material abrasivity and tensioner condition. Those variables differ across every conveyor on a site, so a single replacement interval applied fleet-wide is always wrong somewhere. FM8-CCH treats each cleaning blade as its own asset with its own wear history, then projects that history forward to the threshold the site actually cares about.
If you cannot point to the wear rate behind a changeout decision, you are scheduling on superstition. The cost shows up as carryback, idler damage and consumables you did not need to burn yet.
02Fleet view: every conveyor, one screen
The landing screen is built for a superintendent walking into a Monday planning meeting. It counts the conveyors on site, how many have been inspected, how many need action and how many are on watch. Each conveyor card carries the belt specification, the primary, secondary and tertiary cleaning blades, and a colour-coded status so the red ones surface immediately.
CV-01
Plant Feed · 1400mm · ST2000-FRAS
Plant Feed Conveyor · T1:285/142kN · FR
CV-04
Train Loadout · 1200mm · ST2000-FRAS
Loadout Belt · T1:270/135kN · FR
Filters group conveyors by duty so a planner can isolate, for example, the two longwall trunk belts or the crusher feeds. The point is triage: in one screen a superintendent sees the seven belts demanding action this week and the five worth watching, without opening a single inspection record.
03The wear projection: a changeout date, not a guess
Open a conveyor and each cleaner is tracked separately, because a primary and a secondary cleaner do not wear at the same rate. For each one the app shows current wear, the model fitted, the last inspection, and a predicted changeout date derived from the measured wear rate against an adjustable threshold.
This is the engineering core of the tool. The slope of the solid line is the real wear rate for that blade, on that belt, under that duty. Projected to the threshold, it produces a date a planner can put in the system rather than a rule of thumb. Move the threshold and the date moves with it, so a site running a conservative 80% on a critical loadout belt and a harder 90% on a low-consequence overland can model each on its own terms.
Why each cleaner is tracked separately
On CV-01 above, the primary sits at 34% and projects out past a year, while the secondary is already at 70% and far closer to its limit. Averaging those into a single "cleaner health" number would hide the blade that actually needs attention. Primary cleaner versus secondary cleaner wear behaves differently, and the tool keeps each cleaning blade distinct, with its own model, blade count, tensioner type and threshold.
Most conveyors carry a primary, secondary and tertiary cleaner, and FM8-CCH tracks all three by default. Sites do not always stop at three. Where a heavy carryback duty justifies an extra tertiary or a fourth cleaning blade, the app lets you add further cleaners to a conveyor and tracks each new blade on the same footing: its own wear curve, threshold and projected changeout. The structure follows the conveyor, not a fixed template.
04Inspection history and field evidence
Every inspection is retained against the conveyor, building the dataset the projection depends on. The history tab is the audit trail: who inspected, when, the wear reading on each cleaning blade, condition notes and any photos attached at the time.
| Date | Inspector | Primary | Secondary | Tertiary | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07 Jun 2026 | A. Farquhar | 34% | 70% | 27% | Slight build-up on secondary — cleaned |
| 05 May 2026 | G. McSporran | 30% | 63% 📷1 | 24% | — |
| 07 Apr 2026 | A. Farquhar | 27% | 51% | 20% | Minor belt tracking issue — corrected |
| 17 Feb 2026 | G. McSporran | 21% | 42% | 15% | Water spray nozzle partly blocked — cleared |
| 06 Jan 2026 | A. Farquhar | 17% | 31% | 10% | Water spray nozzle partly blocked — cleared |
Photos matter more than they first appear. A wear percentage is an inspector's read, and reads drift between people. Attaching an image to the record lets a reliability engineer calibrate later, and gives procurement and engineering a defensible trail when a blade is replaced under warranty or a belt event is investigated.
05Recording an inspection in the field
Inspections are entered on the asset, on a phone or tablet at the conveyor. The wear input is a graded slider rather than a free-text box, which keeps readings consistent and gives the inspector immediate feedback on remaining blade life. Date, inspector, optional work order, measured tensions against design, and per-blade model and tensioner details are all captured in the one form.
Photos (up to 3) · condition notes · record blade changeout · measured T1 / T2 vs design
Built for the fitter's phone
FM8-CCH runs well on a desktop PC for a planner reviewing the fleet, but the real gain is in the field. The inspection screen is optimised for a phone, so a maintenance fitter standing at the conveyor completes the whole inspection in a few clicks: set the wear on each blade with the slider, snap a photo, and it uploads straight to the record. There is no separate form to fill in later, no clipboard, and no double handling back in the office. The reading is captured once, at the asset, by the person who actually looked at the blade.
The output can then be shaped to suit the site. FM8 customises the reporting so it ties into the operation's existing planning and maintenance requirements, which means the data leaves the app in the format the planners already work with rather than something they have to re-key. Taking the paperwork out of a fitter's hands and putting a usable record in the planner's system is a small change that removes a real friction point, and it is another example of FM8 thinking past the blade itself to how the work actually gets done on site.
The FRAS tick beside the model is not decoration. On Queensland underground coal, fire resistant anti static compliance is a legal condition of the belt, and recording the fitted model against each cleaning blade keeps the configuration honest. When an inspector records a changeout, the blade resets its baseline and the projection restarts from the new blade, so the wear curve always reflects what is physically on the conveyor.
AI wear estimation from a photograph
Manual reads are useful but subjective, and they vary between inspectors. FM8-CCH can take this a step further: from a photograph of any FM8 cleaning blade, the app uses AI to infer the wear percentage of that blade directly from the image. Because the model knows the geometry of each FM8 blade, an inspector can photograph a primary, secondary or tertiary blade in place and have a wear estimate returned for confirmation, rather than judging the percentage by eye. The photo is retained on the inspection record either way, so the estimate, the confirmed reading and the visual evidence all sit together. Over time this tightens consistency between inspectors and feeds cleaner data into the wear projection that everything else depends on.
06From wear data to a reorder plan
This is where condition monitoring turns into a procurement tool. Because every cleaning blade has a projected changeout date, the app can roll those events across the whole fleet into a single consumption schedule, draw down a running stock balance for each FM8 blade model, and tell the storeman the date stock runs out and the date to reorder by, lead time included.
| Blade model | Position | On hand | Reorder by | Stock-out | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FM8 Super XHD FRAS | Primary | 0 | 16 Jul 2026 | 19 Jul 2026 | ✓ 27d left |
| FM8 Inline TC | Secondary | 0 | 12 Jul 2026 | 15 Jul 2026 | ✓ 23d left |
| FM8 Inline Tool Steel | Secondary | 0 | 17 Jul 2026 | 20 Jul 2026 | ✓ 28d left |
| Date | Conveyor | Position | Blade | Qty | Bal. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jul 2026 | LW-01 Longwall Trunk 1 | Secondary | FM8 Inline TC | -15 | 0 ⛔ |
| 19 Jul 2026 | LW-01 Longwall Trunk 1 | Primary | FM8 Super XHD FRAS | -10 | 0 ⛔ |
| 01 Aug 2026 | CF-01 Crusher Feed 1 | Primary | FM8 Super XHD FRAS | -6 | depleted |
The reorder-by date is the stock-out date minus lead time, so the figure already accounts for how long FM8 takes to deliver. A storeman holding zero on hand against a model needed in three weeks sees it immediately, and a procurement officer standardising on a smaller set of models across sites can see the consolidated burn rate that justifies a blanket order. This is the lifecycle cost story procurement needs, generated from inspection data rather than assembled by hand in a spreadsheet.
07Reporting and the site map
A reporting function generates a PDF either site-wide or for a single conveyor over a chosen date range, suitable for a maintenance pack or a monthly reliability review. A site map view accepts an uploaded terminal plan and drops colour-coded status pins for each conveyor onto it, so anyone can see where the action-required belts physically sit across the operation. Both are reporting layers over the same inspection data, not separate records to maintain.
08What each role gets out of it
Reliability engineers
A measured wear rate for every cleaning blade, not an averaged fleet figure. The history and photo trail let you calibrate readings between inspectors, validate that an FM8 Super XHD blade is delivering the life it should under a given duty, and tune the changeout threshold by consequence rather than habit. AI wear estimation from a photograph keeps those readings consistent, and the projection is the evidence behind a blade replacement interval you can defend.
Superintendents
One screen on a Monday that separates the belts needing action from the belts worth watching. Changeouts arrive with dates attached, which means they can be planned into maintenance windows instead of interrupting vessel loading or reclaim. Less unplanned downtime, fewer cleanup crews under the return run, and a clear count of what is outstanding.
Procurement and stores
A reorder-by date per FM8 blade model that already accounts for delivery lead time, plus a 12-month consumption schedule that shows the burn rate behind any standardisation decision. Stock-outs are visible weeks ahead, and the lifecycle cost case for a given blade is built from real consumption rather than assumption.
09Field scenario: a Bowen Basin coal operation
Take a longwall trunk belt running FM8 Super XHD FRAS primaries and Inline TC secondaries. Historically the site changed primaries every scheduled shutdown regardless of condition. Logged in FM8-CCH, the primary's wear rate projects a changeout roughly five weeks after the next shutdown, meaning the old practice was pulling blades with over a month of life left, every cycle, across multiple belts. The secondary, by contrast, projects to its threshold a fortnight before that shutdown, the exact failure the calendar would have missed. Same data, two opposite corrections, both invisible without a measured wear rate on each cleaning blade.
10FM8's engineering stance
FM8 builds blades and tensioners, and FM8 builds the tooling to run them properly. A premium primary belt cleaner blade only returns its value if it is changed on condition, not on a calendar, and condition is something you measure and project, not feel. FM8-CCH exists because the field evidence is consistent: the operations that track wear rate per cleaning blade run lower carryback, fewer idler failures and a more predictable consumables spend than those running legacy fixed-interval replacement. The tool puts that discipline in reach of a site team without a separate reliability platform or a data scientist to run it.
See FM8-CCH on your conveyors
To see the FM8 Conveyor Cleaner Health App run against your conveyors, blade models and FRAS requirements, contact FM8 for a demonstration.
Contact FM8 for a demonstration