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Mining & Quarrying Conveyor Services: The On-Site Scope

2026-09-29

A quarry does not buy a belt. It buys tonnes per shift, and it judges every supplier by how many of those tonnes actually reach the stockpile. That is the right frame for mining & quarrying conveyor services — the work that happens inside your fence line, after the specification is agreed and long before the first replacement belt is ordered.

Last spring we took over a 1,200 t/h granite line where the belt itself was, on paper, correctly specified. The failures were elsewhere. Sag at the loading point measured 35 mm against a 12 mm target, a mechanical joint had been made 200 mm shorter than the splice drawing allowed, and a return roller two bays before the transfer tower had seized hard enough to polish the pulley shell. None of that looks dramatic on a check sheet. Together it stopped the line three times in seven weeks, about four hours each time.

The same pattern repeats in hard-rock quarries, sand and gravel pits, and limestone operations feeding a kiln. The belt is rarely the weak point. The interface between the belt and everything around it is. This article sets out the on-site work a belt supplier should be prepared to carry out, and the work that should stay with your own maintenance team, so the agreement you sign matches the site you actually run. Nothing here replaces a route walk with your own people; it is meant to tell you what to ask for while you are on that walk.

Discuss the on-site conveyor scope your quarry line actually needs

01What On-Site Service Actually Covers

A purchasing officer and a maintenance planner read the same service contract and come away with different expectations. Purchasing sees a company that supplies belts and sends a technician when asked. The planner sees a promise of survey, splice and inspection support that has to fit into a nine-hour shutdown window between two production campaigns. Both readings can be honest, which is exactly why scope has to be written as phases with named deliverables instead of a general statement of availability from a conveyor belt supplier.

On a quarry line those phases run from the first walk of the route to the day a replacement belt is ordered. Five of them carry almost all the value. A sixth, emergency response, is the one nobody writes down until a belt rips at 03:40 on a Sunday and the plant manager starts phoning at dawn.

Pay attention to the ownership column below. It decides whether a service agreement saves money or simply moves cost from one budget line to another. Where the supplier takes responsibility for tensioning, the supplier also holds the tension record; if your crew tension the belt, that record is yours and the supplier's scope stops at the reading. Ambiguity here is what turns a good relationship into an argument about whose fault a torn edge was.

Mining and quarrying conveyor services team surveying a quarry overland belt line

Phase on site	What the supplier delivers	What stays with the owner	Evidence that closes the phase	Typical on-site time
Survey and duty review	Walk the whole route with a level and a tachometer, measure belt speed under load, sag at each loading point, lump size at the crusher discharge, and record material and ambient temperature across a full shift	Safe access and isolation for belt measurement, operating data such as peak throughput, blocked chute history and any planned drive changes	Signed survey report with measured values, photographs of the problem zones and a written duty summary in tonnes per hour	One to two shifts, dry weather preferred
Selection and engineering support	Convert the survey into a construction: carcass type, cover grade, cover thickness, splice type and pulley diameter check, plus the take-up travel the elongation class will need	Approve the final specification, confirm pulley and structure drawings are current, disclose any change of crusher setting or drive rating	Approved specification sheet, pulley diameter check note and a splice drawing with step length for the actual belt width	Three to ten working days off site
Installation and tensioning	Supervise or carry out belt pulling, stringing through the structure, alignment, counterweight or screw take-up setting and the first loaded tension check	Stop production, control access, provide the crane or winch capacity agreed in the method statement and remove the old belt from site	Tension and alignment record taken at three points after the first loaded run, plus a signed handover note	One to three days depending on route length
Splicing and vulcanising	Prepare steps, strip covers, clean cord, apply compound, run the press cycle, cool under pressure and trim the finished joint; supply press and control panel if the site has none	Power supply, water, a level splice platform at least 3 m longer than the belt is wide, lighting and a fire watch per site rules	Splice record with press temperature, pressure and cure time, dimensional check of step length and joint offset	Eight to sixteen hours per hot splice
Inspection and replacement planning	Condition inspection at agreed intervals, cover wear logged in millimetres, cord exposure and joint condition recorded, roller failures mapped by bay, trend converted into a replacement date	Notice of shutdown windows, access to the previous inspection files and action on the written reject criteria	Inspection report with wear rate per month, a rolling three-month replacement forecast and an updated critical spares list	One shift per inspection round
Spares and emergency response	Hold agreed stock of splice material and the two most heavily loaded roller grades, keep a splice crew on call and quote a realistic call-out window in writing	Keep a shelf stock of the belt currently fitted, confirm on-call contacts each quarter and keep the splice platform usable	Quarterly stock confirmation, current on-call roster and a documented call-out response measured against the contract window	Standing arrangement, reviewed quarterly

Six lines in a table, and each one has a paper trail attached to it. That is the difference between a service agreement and a friendship.

02Survey and Duty Review: Data Before Opinion

No reputable sizing decision comes from a conversation in the site office. It comes from numbers taken on the line, in daylight, with the plant running the way it normally runs. We have walked routes where the owner's own throughput figure was 18 percent higher than anything the drive could actually deliver, and we have watched a second-hand belt get blamed for damage that came from a chute lip 30 mm out of position.

What a survey should capture is narrower than most people expect. Belt speed, lump size at the discharge, sag at each loading point, carryback weight, material temperature and moisture, the abrasion character of the rock, and the condition of the pulleys and take-up. Everything else is supporting detail.

Two numbers carry unusual weight. Belt speed under load sets the impact energy at the feed point, and impact energy rises with the square of velocity, so a line running at 3.4 m/s instead of 2.8 m/s is punishing its cover far more than the change of 0.6 m/s suggests. The second is take-up travel still available. On several inland pits we have found the counterweight sitting within 150 mm of the end of its guide, which quietly rules out a belt class with higher elongation whatever the price list says. That single reading has changed the recommendation on more than one industrial conveyor belt enquiry.

Measurement	Instrument or method	Typical reading on a hard-rock quarry line	Effect on the specification	Field note
Belt speed under load	Handheld tachometer on the return strand of the drive pulley, three readings taken 30 seconds apart	2.6 to 3.4 m/s on a primary crushed-rock line, dropping to about 2.1 m/s when the chute starts to plug and the belt loads up	Sets impact energy at the feed point, which drives cover thickness and impact bars rather than carcass class	Take the reading loaded, not empty; an empty belt misleads everyone
Lump size at crusher discharge	Photograph a full shovel load against a scale bar and repeat ten times across a shift	A 250 mm jaw setting still passing slabs of 400 to 450 mm at the discharge lip during the first minutes of a campaign	Decides whether a reinforced impact zone over the first 6 m will be enough or a full impact-resistant cover is needed	Oversize feed kills splices long before it kills covers
Sag at the loading point	String line across the idler gaps and a steel rule under the loaded strand	25 to 40 mm on lines with 1.2 m idler spacing and rollers that have never been re-levelled	Drives idler spacing change and sets the tension target for the take-up	Above about 2 percent of the span, damage reads as impact wear in the field
Material temperature and moisture	Infrared thermometer on the discharge plus a grab sample weighed wet and dried on site	18 to 30 degrees C at the discharge in summer, with 4 to 9 percent moisture in winter stockpiles	Separates standard cover duty from heat-resistant compound and predicts whether carryback will need a secondary cleaner	Wet fines under a press are a splice problem, not a cleaning problem
Carryback volume	Clean exactly 1 m of return belt, collect the fines under the line and weigh them after one shift	1.8 to 3.5 kg per metre per shift on lines with a single worn cleaner and a chute with low skirt clearance	Justifies a second cleaner stage or a change of scraper blade material before a belt change is scheduled	Weight settles the argument that appearance cannot
Abrasion character of the rock	Site lab report on a grab sample, typically a Los Angeles abrasion value or the pit's own grindability result	Granite and basalt sit near the top of the range, limestone and chalk well below, with a wide spread inside a single pit face	Selects cover grade; the wear classes in DIN 22102 (W, X, Y) map onto exactly this decision	Sample the face you will work for the next two years, not the one closest to the office
Ambient temperature range	Site weather record over twelve months, cross-checked against the coldest start-up the plant has actually experienced	Minus 12 to plus 38 degrees C on inland pits, with the coldest start at 05:00 on a line that has been idle for nine hours	Governs compound choice for cold-start stiffness and any need for a fire-resistant grade indoors	A cold belt that will not trough will not track either
Drive, pulley and take-up condition	Measure pulley diameters, lagging thickness, screw thread position and counterweight travel remaining	Counterweights within 150 to 200 mm of the end of travel, and drive pulley lagging worn to 4 mm from an original 10 mm	Fixes the elongation class that will physically fit the structure and flags grip loss at the drive	A belt that cannot be tensioned cannot be made to run straight

03Selection and Engineering Support the Supplier Should Carry

Once the data is on the table, the selection argument is usually short. Long arguments are a symptom of missing measurements. A conveyor belt manufacturer that works on quarry duty will typically ask three questions before naming a construction: what is the largest lump on the belt, how small is the smallest pulley on the route, and how much take-up travel is left. Answer those honestly and the rest is arithmetic.

What the supplier should hand back is a package, not a price. A carcass class with a tension rating in N/mm, a cover grade with a stated wear class, a splice drawing with step length matched to the belt width, and a pulley diameter check against the selected carcass. For a steel cord construction, that last item is not optional; the cord needs a larger drum diameter than fabric of the same strength, and a quarry that upgrades strength while keeping a small drum is buying a splice failure on credit. The same principle applies to a rubber conveyor belt in fabric construction on the secondary and tertiary lines, where drum sizes are small and ply count matters more than nominal strength.

Heavy duty rubber belt supplied under a mining and quarrying conveyor services contract

Good engineering support also says no. We have talked two operators out of steel cord on short, tightly run secondary lines, and out of a heavier cover on a route where the real problem was a badly set chute lip. Neither conversation earned a bigger order that month. Both kept the belt on the line for years instead of months, which is the only argument that survives a budget review.

Site condition	Construction the supplier should propose	Cover grade and thickness	Diameter and take-up check before ordering	What goes wrong when the pick is wrong
Primary crushed granite at 1,200 t/h with 400 mm slabs	Steel cord carcass with transverse reinforcement, or a high-tensile fabric build where drum diameters are small	Abrasion grade to DIN 22102 class W or X, 8 mm top and 4 mm bottom, with a reinforced impact zone under the chute	Confirm every pulley in the circuit against the steel cord minimum diameter table, not only the drive pulley	Undersized drums flex the cord; the belt then fails at the splice rather than in mid-span and looks like a splicing fault
Secondary and tertiary cone discharge, sized product	Fabric carcass in EP, four or five ply equivalents depending on the tension needed	General purpose class Y, 6 mm top and 2 mm bottom, which handles sized stone comfortably	Fabric tolerates small drums far better than cord; verify the take-up has travel for the belt's elongation class	Over-specifying cord on a short line raises cost and makes every splice slower and more delicate
Sand and gravel pit with frequent starts and wet feed	EP fabric with high-tensile cord, static conductive build if the enclosure holds combustible dust	6 mm top and 2 mm bottom with good wet grip; covers below 5 mm wear through in a single season of sharp sand	Check drive lagging condition, because a wet line needs grip more than it needs raw strength	A stalled start on a wet pulley scorches the belt surface and is often mistaken for an abrasion problem
Limestone and clinker feed to a kiln	Heat-resistant build for the hot section and a fire resistant conveyor belt construction where coal or alternative fuel dust collects indoors	Heat-resistant compound, 8 mm top cover, with the grade and the temperature limit stated on the certificate	Heat and fire grades often carry a lower tension rating than a standard belt of the same width — verify before the order	A standard cover hardens, cracks and lets moisture into the cord within a single campaign
Recycled material with rebar and wire	Cut and impact resistant build with a fabric breaker layer above the carcass	10 mm top cover with a cut resistant conveyor belt compound in the loading zone	Check that the smallest pulley still accepts the thicker build without excessive counter-bending stress	Exposed wire cuts in both directions; a breaker layer costs less than the belt it saves
Long overland haul of several kilometres in one flight	Steel cord in a low elongation class with a high modulus compound, sized to DIN 22131 or ISO 15236 for the tension required	Abrasion grade, 6 mm top and 4 mm bottom, with a cover chosen for the rock rather than for the tonnage	Take-up travel must be designed for a low elongation class; a long flight leaves no room for a stretchier belt	A higher-elongation belt exhausts the take-up inside the first year and the counters then run on the stops

Selection support is worth having before the tender, not after

By the time three prices are on the table, the construction is usually fixed and the only variable left is margin. Bring a conveyor belt factory into the discussion before the enquiry goes out and you get a construction decision; bring one in afterwards and you get a quotation. The materials side of the same argument, including abrasion resistant conveyor belt grades and their wear classes, is covered elsewhere on this site if you want the detail before you talk to anyone.

04Installation and Tensioning: The First Shutdown Day

Installation is where a good specification meets a tired crew at the end of a long shift. The work is physical and the decisions are small, but the consequences are not. Pulling a 1,200 mm belt through a structure with the wrong winch angle puts a twist in the belt that no amount of training idlers will remove, and re-tensioning a gravity tower by throwing extra plates on the counterweight is the most common way a quarry turns a tracking problem into a splice failure.

Every belt we commission gets the same treatment. String it, align it, tension it to the figure in the supplier's table, run it empty for thirty minutes, then run it loaded and measure again. The loaded reading is the only one that counts. Belt elongation continues for the first few shifts, and on a 900 m overland line with a steel cord carcass we recorded 0.25 percent permanent elongation over the first ten days, which consumed 2.2 m of the take-up. If the tower only had 1.5 m of travel left, the belt would have been running on the stops by the end of the second week.

Who does the work matters less than who signs the record. Where a site prefers to use its own crew, a conveyor belt distributor can attend as supervisor and still hand over a measured tension note, which keeps the warranty argument clean if a splice later lets go. What should never happen is a split of responsibility where nobody knows who set the take-up.

Take-up type	Tension target for a 1,200 mm EP belt at 1,200 t/h	How the reading is taken	What goes into the record	Most common field error
Gravity counterweight tower	Weight sized so sag at the loading point falls between 1 and 2 percent of the idler span with the belt loaded	Steel rule under the loaded strand at the steepest idler gap, plant running, three positions along the line	Counterweight mass in kilograms, tower position relative to the guide, and the three measured sag values	Adding plates to cure mistracking instead of re-levelling and squaring the idlers in the offending bay
Screw take-up with 600 mm of travel	At least 250 mm of reserved travel remaining after the belt has run loaded for two full shifts	Measure thread position against a punched datum mark on the frame, before and after the first loaded shift	Thread position in millimetres, ambient temperature at the time of reading, and belt width measured at the joint	Screwing the take-up to the end of its travel in the first week and leaving nothing for winter contraction
Hydraulic winch take-up	System pressure set to the tension figure for the actual belt width, not to the pressure used on the previous belt	Gauge reading during a controlled loaded start, repeated once with cold oil to see the drift	Pressure, oil temperature, and elongation measured in millimetres across a marked 50 m section of the line	Reusing the pressure setting from a different carcass class and calling the result commissioned
Automatic winch with load cells	Constant tension held within 10 percent of the design figure throughout the shift	Load cell display plus a falling-weight check once a quarter to confirm the cell has not drifted	Calibration date, drift in percent, and the sag measurement taken independently of the automation	Letting the controller add tension to compensate for a seized roller, which hides the real fault for months

05Splicing and Vulcanising On Site

Splice quality decides belt life more often than belt grade does. A stepped hot splice in a fabric belt reaches the strength of the belt itself when the steps are cut to the drawing, the cord is dried properly and the press cools under pressure until the joint is below 60 degrees C. Rushed cooling is the single most expensive shortcut on a quarry shutdown schedule, because a splice that leaves the press hot will look perfect on Friday and start lifting at the edges in three weeks.

For steel cord, the cord-by-cord or finger splice demands more skill and more time, and the site has to be clean enough to keep grit out of the joint. We have refused to vulcanise in a shed where the shot-blast plant was running next door, and we were right to; airborne grit in the compound shows up later as small voids along the cord line. A wholesale conveyor belts order that includes splice material and a trained crew is worth more on this day than a lower price per metre.

Hot vulcanised splice carried out under a mining and quarrying conveyor services contract

Joint method	Belt constructions it suits	Time on site for a 1,200 mm belt	Strength against the belt rating	Site conditions required
Hot vulcanised stepped splice	Fabric carcass in EP or cotton, from two ply upwards, on all normal quarry duty	Eight to twelve hours including strip, clean, build, cure and cooling under pressure	Typically 80 to 100 percent of belt strength when steps and offset match the drawing	Level platform, dry air, power for the press, and a fire watch during the cure cycle
Hot vulcanised cord-by-cord splice	Steel cord belts on overland, decline and high-tension quarry lines	Fourteen to twenty-four hours on a two or three stage press cycle	Roughly 85 to 100 percent depending on the splice pattern and the cord spacing accuracy	Clean enclosure away from blasting, dust and grit, with a press long enough for the splice pattern
Cold vulcanised splice	Small to medium fabric belts, often on conveyor belts in plants without press capacity	Six to ten hours, of which most is curing time that cannot be compressed	Around 60 to 80 percent of belt strength, lower again below 10 degrees C	Material temperature above 15 degrees C and moisture below the cement's tolerance limit
Mechanical fastener, bolt plate or hook	Emergency repair on any construction, and permanent joints only on short auxiliary belts	One to three hours with two people and a plate clamp	Usually 50 to 75 percent, and it degrades with every cycle at the drive	Square belt ends, matching fastener size, and a belt thick enough to hold the bolts

One detail worth insisting on: whoever makes the splice writes the record. Press temperature, pressure, cure time and cooling time, with the belt width and joint position marked on the sheet and physically stamped on the belt edge. Three years later that stamp is the only proof of where the splice sits when a cut has to be planned.

Rollers and pulleys around the joint deserve a look on the same day. A joint that thumps once per revolution usually means a conveyor pulley with a proud weld or a seized conveyor roller, not a bad splice. Fixing the splice repeatedly while the cause sits in the frame is a week of lost production.

06Inspection, Condition Monitoring and Replacement Planning

Inspection earns its keep when it produces a date, not a report. A sheet that says the belt shows moderate wear is useless to a planner. A sheet that says the top cover is losing 0.18 mm a month at the loading zone, against a remaining cover of 4.2 mm and a reject limit of 3 mm, gives a replacement window in the first quarter of next year and a reason to book the shutdown now.

That style of reporting needs the same measuring points every visit. Mark them on the structure with paint and record them identically, because a cover thickness measured 2 m further along the line is a different number. The same discipline applies to the rotating equipment; an impact idler in the loading bay and a troughing idler three bays down fail for different reasons and should be logged separately. Drive components belong on the sheet too, and a quarry that runs its own transmission drives alongside the belt line will recognise the same discipline that a transmission belt manufacturer expects from a routine belt check on a crusher drive. The same reasoning explains why a V-belt manufacturer asks for pulley groove wear measurements alongside belt condition, because a wrapped drive belt fails from a worn groove far more often than from its own cord.

Trends beat snapshots. Over four years and roughly 40 inspections, the two things that predicted failure best on our own contracts were the rate of cord exposure at the splice and the number of seized rollers per 100 m. Neither is expensive to count.

Inspection point	Interval on a two-shift quarry line	Method	Reject threshold worth writing down	Record and follow-up
Top cover wear at the loading zone	Monthly, plus after any change of crusher setting	Ultrasonic gauge at four marked points across the belt width, averaged and compared with the previous visit	Remaining cover below 70 percent of the original thickness, or fabric visible at any point	Thickness per point, wear rate in mm per month, and a replacement date entered in the maintenance plan
Splice condition	Weekly visual, detailed check every quarter	Walk the joint at slow speed, look for lifted edges, open step lines and cord shadowing through the cover	Any edge lift over 5 mm, or a step line opening more than the drawing tolerance	Photograph the joint, log position in metres from the head pulley, and schedule a repair or a recut
Belt edges and tracking	Every shift for the first week after installation, then weekly	Check clearance between belt edge and structure at the tightest point, and watch the belt on the self aligning idler set	Edge fouling the structure, or a persistent sideways drift over 40 mm at the tail	Photograph the tightest point, check frame squareness, then adjust training idler positions before adding tension
Rollers, idlers and frames	Monthly, with a seized-roller count every visit	Spin by hand where reachable, listen for rattle, measure shell wear on the loaded side, check the return idler line for flats	Shell wear over 2 mm, any roller that will not rotate freely, or bearing play felt by hand	Seized rollers per 100 m, mapped by bay, with replacements ordered against the count
Drive pulley and lagging	Quarterly, and immediately after any slip event	Measure lagging thickness at four points, inspect the shell for polishing and the steel roller surfaces for build-up	Lagging below half its original thickness, or a polished band wider than 200 mm	Thickness readings, photographic record, and a lagging or pulley change booked into a planned stop
Cleaners and skirt rubber	Fortnightly, with carryback weighed once a quarter	Check blade contact across the belt width, measure skirt gap, and weigh the fines recovered from 1 m of return belt	Carryback over 2 kg per metre per shift, or a blade contact gap over 3 mm at any point	Weight, blade adjustment record, and a note of which cleaner stage is failing

07Spare Parts, Stocking and Emergency Response

A quarry that keeps the right four items in the store will outrun a quarry that keeps forty random ones. The shortlist is decided by one question per item: if this fails tonight, how many tonnes do we lose before it is back on the line? Cord splice material, the two most heavily loaded roller grades, a set of conveyor components for the drive pulley area and one spare mechanical fastener strip answer most of the emergencies we have been called to.

Storage matters as much as stock. Cord and fabric belt rolls stored on a concrete floor for two years pick up moisture and lose adhesion at the ends; splice compound has a shelf life printed on the tin and a temperature window that a steel shed in the sun does not respect. The same point applies to wrapped drive belts and V-belts, which stiffen and take a set if they are hung over a nail for a season instead of resting on a rack at the recommended diameter.

Item	Criticality if it fails on a Sunday	Sensible site stock	Typical supplier lead time	Storage rule
Cord and cover splice material for the fitted belt	Complete loss of the line; no splice, no production at all	Enough compound and cord for two full joints on the widest belt in the plant, plus a spare press element set	Two to five days by air, two to four weeks by sea, unless held in country	Cool, dry, out of direct sun, with the compound shelf life written on the box and checked each quarter
Troughing and impact rollers in the two busiest grades	Reduced throughput and belt damage within days, full stop if a loading bay empties	Two percent of the installed roller population, weighted towards the loading and transfer bays	Three to ten days for standard grades, longer for sealed heavy-duty patterns	Indoor racking, no direct ground contact, and shrink wrap left on until the roller is installed
Drive pulley lagging sheet and bonding kit	A slipping drive that cannot be run at full load, often worse in wet weather	One spare length matching the drive pulley shell circumference, plus a bonding kit inside its shelf life	One to three weeks, and the job needs a crane and a shutdown window	Roll flat, never folded, and keep the bonding agent with the kit rather than in the general consumables store
Mechanical fastener strips and plate clamps	Temporary reprieve only, but it is the difference between a two hour stop and a two day one	Two strips at the widest belt width, with the matching cutting template kept with them	Two to seven days, widely available from industrial distributors	Counter stock only; a mechanical joint left in a main line belt for a season quietly damages the carcass
Roller brackets, frame sections and skirt rubber	Slow, awkward repair; usually causes misalignment that then damages the belt edge	A handful of conveyor brackets in the common sizes and 3 m of skirt rubber in the fitted thickness	One to four weeks depending on fabrication, so plan against the inspection trend	Label by conveyor number; loose parts in a shared bin are the reason a one hour job becomes a five hour job

Emergency response needs a number attached to it. Not a promise to attend, but a stated call-out window for the covered site, reviewed each quarter against what actually happened. One of our own contracts has run for three years with a 12 hour commitment inside a 400 km radius, and the two occasions we missed it cost us the renewal negotiation before it even started.

08Reporting, Contract Terms and Site Safety

Every service agreement we have seen fail failed on measurement, not on effort. The crew turned up, the splice held, the rollers were changed, and at renewal the quarry could not say what any of it had been worth. Put four numbers in the contract and the conversation changes. Belt availability against planned hours, mean time between unplanned stops, the percentage of inspections delivered on the agreed schedule, and call-out response against the committed window.

Scope also needs to survive personnel changes on both sides. The maintenance planner who negotiated the survey leaves, a new planner arrives, and nobody remembers that the loading point was meant to be re-inspected after the crusher was reset. Written scope, named contacts and a quarterly review solve this, and they cost nothing. Sites that run as a group should align their quality assurance requirements across every pit in the portfolio, because a belt accepted at one plant and rejected at another is almost always a records problem rather than a product problem.

Safety is not a separate chapter. Splicing happens in a trench, at night, with a press at 145 degrees C and a generator running. A method statement that covers isolation, gas monitoring in confined transfer towers, hot work permits, and a defined exclusion zone around a tensioned belt is part of the deliverable, and any supplier who treats it as paperwork should be removed from the shortlist. Our own rule is blunt: no splice starts without the isolation certificate signed and visible at the press.

Agreement point	How it is measured	Target or threshold	Reporting interval	Consequence written into the contract
Scope of on-site work	Phase list from the survey report checked against work actually performed and signed for	Every phase closed with its named deliverable, including a tension record and a splice record for each joint made	Per shutdown, summarised quarterly	Unclosed phases are listed and corrected before the next planned stop, at no extra charge
Inspection schedule	Number of inspections delivered against the number scheduled in the annual plan	At least 90 percent delivered within three working days of the planned date	Monthly one page summary plus the full report per visit	Missed inspections trigger a credit against the service fee and a catch-up visit inside two weeks
Splice performance	Number of joints requiring repair within six months of being made, tracked by press record number	No more than one repaired joint per twenty made, and none within the first thirty days	Quarterly, with photographs of any failure	Repair labour and material carried by the supplier where the press record shows the cycle was met
Belt and roller consumption	Metres of belt replaced and rollers changed per 100,000 tonnes conveyed, from the inspection log	Set against the first year's baseline and improved, or explained in writing at the quarterly review	Quarterly against a rolling twelve month figure	A written root cause review within ten days of two consecutive quarters above baseline
Call-out response	Clock time from the logged call to the arrival of a crew with splice or roller capability	Within the committed window for the site, typically 12 to 24 hours, with a 24 hour contact number that answers	Every event, plus a quarterly tally	Missed windows recorded and priced into the next renewal discussion
Spares availability	Agreed stock list physically checked against the shelf, not against an inventory screen	95 percent line fill on critical items, with shelf life in date	Quarterly physical count signed by both parties	Expired or missing critical items replenished under the contract rather than on a new order

One more thing belongs in the agreement, and it is the least glamorous line in the document. Escalation. Who the site calls at 02:00, who the supplier wakes up, and how long before the area manager on both sides joins the call. Decide it while everyone is calm. Quarries that skip this step discover their escalation path during the first serious belt failure, usually through a voicemail.

If you want the wider picture of how this fits with roller selection and site delivery across a group of pits, our mining and quarrying pages and the conveyor service scope notes set out the same phases in less detail, and the steel cord conveyor belt pages give the carcass side of the argument for long overland flights. For the maintenance pattern on those long belts, the note on steel cord belt inspection and lifespan is worth reading before you fix your inspection intervals.

Send us your route details and shutdown calendar

09Frequently Asked Questions

Who should pay for the initial route survey, the quarry or the supplier?

On lines with a realistic expectation of a belt order within twelve months, we survey at our own cost and treat it as part of the sales work, because a survey we carry out ourselves is the only way we can stand behind a specification. Where the enquiry is genuinely exploratory, or the plant is asking for a full duty review of four lines with no order in view, a day rate is fair and normal. Either way, ask for the measured values in writing. A survey report with a belt speed, three sag readings and a lump size distribution still has value if you buy elsewhere, which is exactly why some suppliers charge for it.

Can a hot splice be done on site in winter?

It can, with two conditions met. The belt has to be dry and above roughly 10 degrees C at the joint, which usually means a tent or a shed over the splice platform and a warm air blower running while the steps are cut. Second, the cure cycle should be extended rather than compressed, because a cold belt and a cold press plate pull heat out of the compound faster than the schedule assumes. We have made good joints at minus 6 degrees C inside a tent. We have also seen rushed joints made in the open at 2 degrees C fail within a month, and the press record showed why.

How often should these lines be inspected on a two-shift operation?

Monthly is the sensible baseline for the belt itself, with the loading zone measured by ultrasonic gauge at four fixed points and the splice walked weekly at slow speed. Rollers want a monthly hand-spin pass with a seized count per 100 m, and the drive pulley lagging wants a quarterly measurement. Anything on a short auxiliary line can drop to a quarterly round. The intervals matter less than the consistency: the same points, the same method, the same person where possible, so the trend is comparable and the replacement date means something.

Which spare parts are actually worth holding in the site store?

Four groups cover most emergencies. Splice material for the widest belt in the plant, enough for two joints. Rollers in the two grades that carry the loading and transfer bays, at roughly two percent of the installed population. A length of drive pulley lagging with its bonding kit. And a mechanical fastener strip at the widest belt width. Add roller brackets in the common sizes and 3 m of skirt rubber, and you have covered nearly every call-out we have attended in the last five years. Everything else can be ordered against the inspection trend rather than held on a shelf.

How do we decide between another repair and planning a replacement?

Let the wear rate decide, not the calendar. If the top cover is losing 0.2 mm a month and 4 mm remains against a 3 mm limit, you have roughly five months and can book a planned stop. If the same measurement shows 2 mm remaining, you are into unplanned failure territory and the belt should come off at the next available window. Cord exposure at the splice, a joint repaired twice in twelve months, or more than three seized rollers per 100 m all push the decision forward. Write the numbers into the inspection report and the argument disappears.

What makes an on-site service agreement enforceable in practice?

Four measured commitments and one name. Belt availability against planned hours, unplanned stops per month, inspections delivered against inspections scheduled, and call-out response against the committed window. Then the escalation contact, decided in advance rather than during the first failure. Everything else is intention. We also recommend a quarterly physical stock count signed by both sides, because spares availability is the one promise that quietly erodes without anybody noticing until the night it matters. Contracts with those five items get reviewed honestly; contracts without them get renewed on price alone.