The new release, designed by its team at the Martin Center for Innovation, monitors primary belt cleaner blades and can also track and report remaining service life.

N2's capabilities include sending notifications to plant operations personnel and the company's service technicians when replacements are needed, abnormal operation is recognised or re-tensioning is required. Management and service technicians can even access information for any of its networked cleaners via mobile phone.

Once placed, the units operate independently on any plant communications infrastructure. Self-contained in design, the model was developed to minimise the dependency on in-plant resources.

Martin noted that the PI can be added to a new installation or can be directly retrofitted to systems that are utilising its replacement blades. To date, it has already reached approximately 1,000 operating systems - with some of them getting the release at no cost.

"Martin offers the equipment, monitoring service and batteries free of charge to qualifying customers," the company said. "[We] will also support the PI components and provide customer alerts without cost as needed, with mainframes and tensioners replaced free for users of Martin belt cleaner blades."

Martin Engineering global marketing director Brad Pronschinske added that there are also no annual maintenance fees, and no add-on charges for cell phone access to monitor the N2. Battery life has been projected to be about two years, and only the gateway requires a power point with a constant 110V feed.

"Position indicators can be mounted anywhere from 3-800 metres from the cellular gateway, and the robust, sealed construction means it is virtually immune from damage," he explained. He also noted that as many as 50 units can be monitored on a single gateway.

Additionally, the system doesn't need a cellular line for each PI unit, as they communicate using a radio frequency on each sensor that is sent to the gateway.

Alerts are sent for a number of conditions, including blade changes, cleaner back-off, significant temperature changes, low batteries and more.

"[It] eliminates the need for manual inspections by giving technicians precise information, delivering critical real-time intelligence and reducing exposure to moving conveyors, improving both efficiency and safety. Maintenance planning is simplified by having detailed information available on demand, allowing service personnel to deliver and install replacement wear parts during scheduled outages," he said.

According to Martin Engineering, delivering instant and continuous feedback while eliminating guesswork for crews using the N2 PI - meaning histories of maintenance are all logged and no longer manually compiled - equals a greater return on sites' belt cleaner investments.

"By monitoring the rotation of the belt cleaner mainframe, the N2 Position Indicator helps managers plan tensioner adjustments and blade replacements during scheduled outages," Pronschinske said.

"The system recognises how much rotation is acceptable before tensioner adjustment is required…[and] allows our service technicians to know exactly when a belt cleaner needs replacement, even before the customer does."