Early Warning of an Increased Gearbox Bearing Vibrations on a Bucket Wheel Reclaimer Author Sticky Jacqueline Vinyard Director, Product Marketing GE Vernova’s Software Business A professionally trained journalist, Jackie has a degree in journalism and has spent 15+ years’ experience as a researcher and launching innovative technology. She lives in Boulder, CO with her husband, three children and two dogs. Her latest passion is launching software at GE Vernova to accelerate the energy transition and to decarbonize the world. Johannes Mahanyele Customer Reliability Engineer GE Vernova’s Software Business As a Mechanical Engineer specialising in strategy and engineering within the Power Generation, Oil, and Gas sectors, Johannes holds a B-Tech in Engineering, an MBA, and has completed Strategy Execution Certification at Harvard Business School, among other institutions. With over 13 years of engineering experience, Johannes adeptly harnesses cutting-edge technology, data science, and industry best practices to revolutionize industrial processes. In his role as a Customer Reliability Engineer, he is at the forefront of utilizing APM and SmartSignal predictive analytics to avert equipment downtime by detecting, diagnosing, forecasting, and preventing critical asset failures. Dec 08, 2025 Last Updated 3 minutes Share For a large mining company in Africa, early failure detection is mission critical. When key assets, such as crushers or beneficiation plants experience downtime, it can mean losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every hour… and millions of dollars each day.Unplanned maintenance is far more expensive than scheduled servicing, both in parts and labor. Faulty equipment also increases the risk of accidents, especially in high-risk zones at mining sites. Committed to sustainability, this mining customer additionally sought an equipment reliability program to prevent failures that lead to increased emissions or spills.To help run a world-class operation, this customer relies on GE Vernova’s SmartSignal AI/ML predictive maintenance software to spot anomalies before they become failures. What did SmartSignal Predictive Maintenance software find? SmartSignal identified a deviation in the stockyard conveyor stacker feed at a mining site. A conveyor stacker/feeder is a key component in bulk material handling systems. It’s part of the infrastructure that moves, stores, and manages large volumes of raw materials in a stockyard.The material arrives via a truck or loader, the feeder regulates how muc h material enters the system, and the conveyor moves it across the yards. The stacker then places it into organized piles. This system is key to keeping operations smooth, safe, and scalable.SmartSignal gives customers the ability to deploy digital twin blueprints. The blueprints are prebuilt models based on engineering expertise and over two decades of monitoring equipment worldwide.Having digital twin blueprints for bucket wheel reclaimers provides coverage from day one of deployment.In this case, the SmartSignal blueprint of the customer's bucket wheel reclaimer revealed a significant increase in stockyard conveyor stacker gearbox bearing vibrations. Here’s what it revealed: The input bearing vibration rose from 0.4G to 1.8GThe secondary intermediate shaft bearing vibration increased from 0.3G to 1GThe first intermediate shaft bearing vibration escalated from 0.2G to 1.8G. The shaft bearing vibration rise to 1.8G represented a 4.5x increase, which could indicate bearing wear or damage, misalignment, lubrication failure or contamination. If the gearbox failed in this scenario, the entire reclaimer would potentially need to be shut down for repairs. This customer implemented SmartSignal in combination with GE Vernova’s Industrial Managed Services (IMS), a high-touch monitoring service for critical equipment. For customers who choose this model, an assigned IMS engineer continuously monitors asset health using SmartSignal and meets with the customer biweekly to review insights and recommendations.The assigned IMS engineer issued a high-priority alert recommending a manual FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) reading to investigate a potential bearing defect. Manual FFT is a diagnostic technique that transforms time-domain vibration signals into a frequency spectrum, helping isolate the root cause of anomalies.The process involves: Capturing the vibration signal over timeConverting it into a frequency spectrum to identify which frequencies are present and how strong they areInterpreting the spectrum by identifying peaks at specific frequencies that may indicate faultsComparing the results against historical baselines or manufacturer specifications to confirm abnormalities The findings and resolution steps were also documented in the weekly IMS report and discussed with the customer during their regular review meeting. What was the underlying cause? Following the notification from the IMS team, the customer conducted a visual inspection and noticed unusual noises emanating from the gearbox. An FFT analysis detected a 1X frequency and elevated gear mesh frequency, leading to the decision to replace the gearbox.After replacing the gearbox of the stockyard conveyor stacker feed, the vibrations of the new gearbox bearings were observed to be healthy and remained within the permissible variance compared to the model data estimate. What was the value to the customer? Thanks to the early alert from SmartSignal and IMS, the customer was able to proactively replace the gearbox on the stockyard conveyor stacker feed. This helped to avoid potential cascading failures.Had operations continued with the defective gearbox, it could have led to collateral damage to the drive shaft and other surrounding components. This may have resulted in costly downtime and reduced throughput.Following the maintenance action, the assigned IMS engineer validated its effectiveness by observing that the monitored values had returned to trend, falling within the acceptable range defined by the model. This confirmation was also included in the biweekly report and reviewed with the customer during their regular meeting.This proactive intervention helped the customer to: Avoid unplanned downtimePrevent collateral damage (protecting components including the drive shaft, bearings, motor, and structural support)Maintain throughputImprove asset reliability and extend the life of surrounding components It is estimated to have prevented approximately $235,000 in costs. Author Section Authors Jacqueline Vinyard Director, Product Marketing GE Vernova’s Software Business A professionally trained journalist, Jackie has a degree in journalism and has spent 15+ years’ experience as a researcher and launching innovative technology. She lives in Boulder, CO with her husband, three children and two dogs. Her latest passion is launching software at GE Vernova to accelerate the energy transition and to decarbonize the world. Johannes Mahanyele Customer Reliability Engineer GE Vernova’s Software Business As a Mechanical Engineer specialising in strategy and engineering within the Power Generation, Oil, and Gas sectors, Johannes holds a B-Tech in Engineering, an MBA, and has completed Strategy Execution Certification at Harvard Business School, among other institutions. With over 13 years of engineering experience, Johannes adeptly harnesses cutting-edge technology, data science, and industry best practices to revolutionize industrial processes. In his role as a Customer Reliability Engineer, he is at the forefront of utilizing APM and SmartSignal predictive analytics to avert equipment downtime by detecting, diagnosing, forecasting, and preventing critical asset failures.