Vale case: 30,000 tons of ore saved with wireless sensors

Wireless vibration monitoring in mining helped Vale’s Fazendão Mine replace fortnightly manual data collection with continuous monitoring of conveyor belts, vibrating screens, feeders and jaw crushers.

According to Vale’s estimates, the change prevented the loss of 30,000 tons of ore, worth R$ 3.4 million, and freed 12.8 man-hours per month from field collection.

In this case study, you will see what made manual collection risky at the mine, which assets were monitored and how the Dynamox Platform helped the team find a bearing housing failure before it stopped a conveyor.

The challenge: manual data collection in a large mine

At the Fazendão Mine, the maintenance team collected condition monitoring data manually, every two weeks. An analyst had to go to each machine, take the measurements and only then run the analysis.

Measurements were taken with the machines running. Even with all safety rules in place, this meant working close to moving equipment, often in ergonomically poor postures.

Each route also took time and generated travel costs. The team faced three main obstacles:

• Long distances between the mine’s operating areas.
• Restricted-access areas with large equipment in transit, such as off-road trucks.
• Hard-to-reach equipment (blind spots), where collecting parameters such as vibration put people at risk.

Vale looked for a way to improve asset monitoring for its predictive maintenance team and chose Dynamox.

The solution: wireless vibration and temperature sensors with gateways

Dynamox installed wireless vibration and temperature sensors on the mine’s equipment and on each relevant subassembly.

DynaGateways communicate directly with the sensors and collect the data automatically, so no one has to walk the route to download it. The table below shows the assets and components covered by the project.

The data reaches the Dynamox Platform, where DynaDetect, the platform’s automated diagnosis, combines field experience with machine learning to point out anomalies.

This gives analysts more time to validate diagnoses and plan interventions. Results appear in reports and custom dashboards that show the status and type of each anomaly detected.

How the drive pulley bearing housing failure was detected

With sensor data centralized in the cloud, the team began to detect failures earlier and with more precision. One example came from a conveyor belt: the left-side bearing housing of the drive pulley.

On the dashboard, the asset’s diagnosis moved from “monitoring” to “critical”. On the Dynamox Platform, DynaDetect identified the failure as looseness.

Based on the report, the team scheduled the intervention and replaced the bearing. The inspection showed rotation marks on the inner race, above the adapter sleeve, which confirmed the diagnosis.

Rotation marks on the inner race are a typical sign that the bearing was turning on the sleeve. Left unchecked, this kind of bearing failure can damage the shaft and stop the conveyor.

Results

Vale estimated the gains after the solution became part of the maintenance team’s routine.

Continuous data also ended the need for point-by-point analysis across the plant and helped prevent several catastrophic failures at the mine.

What mining maintenance teams can take from this case

Three points from the Fazendão project apply to other mining operations:

• Start with the assets that stop the circuit. Conveyor belts, screens and crushers are the links where one failure halts ore flow, so they bring the fastest return.
• Monitor the components, not only the machine. Motors, gearboxes, bearing housings and exciter boxes fail in different ways, and each one needs its own measurement point.
• Remove people from risky routes. Automatic collection through gateways reduces exposure in areas with heavy traffic and blind spots, while increasing the frequency of data.

To go deeper into the technique behind this case, read the guide on industrial vibration analysis. You can also see how a similar project was run at another Vale operation in the Salobo wireless monitoring case.

➡️ See more success cases from Dynamox.

Want to bring continuous monitoring to your mining assets? Talk to Dynamox specialists.

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