Coolon x Schaeffler Deployment Story

Lighting, machine condition monitoring and automated lubrication on a single network

How a remote gold operation gained continuous visibility of its critical conveyors by combining Coolon’s smart BCL luminaires with Schaeffler's OPTIME monitoring and lubrication system

The challenge

At a remote gold operation in the Western Australian Goldfields, one of the processing areas runs largely unmanned. The superintendent responsible for it needed a way to keep watch over critical rotating assets, in this case a multi-conveyor system, without maintaining a permanent presence on the ground. Conveyor failures rarely happen without warning. A bearing running hot or a drive developing excess vibration will show signs well before it stops, but only if something is in place to detect them. On an unmanned site, those early indicators go unnoticed until the conveyor is already down, by which point the operation is facing lost production, an emergency call-out and a long trip to a remote location. What the superintendent wanted was continuous oversight of the machines themselves, delivered as data rather than as a person standing beside them

The solution

The site was fitted with Coolon smart BCL luminaires alongside Schaeffler's OPTIME machine conditionmonitoring and auto lubrication system, giving the operation both its lighting and its machine-health 
monitoring and greasing from a single connected network.
Coolon supplied and installed:

• DLK2S smart conveyor and area lights
• DLK3 smart conveyor and area lights
• Blinky visual signalling luminaires

Each of these luminaires carries a smart networking node, and once powered they, mesh together to form 
a single site-wide wireless network. Lights are well suited to this role because they are elevated, 
permanently powered, distributed across the entire site and already inspected as part of routine 
maintenance, which makes them a dependable carrier for site-wide connectivity.
The Schaeffler monitoring layer was added onto that network:

• 20 x OPTIME AW5 wireless vibration and temperature sensors, mounted to the critical assets along the conveyor system
• 10 x OPTIME C1 automatic lubricators, delivering a controlled volume of grease to bearings on a set schedule

How it works

Each AW5 sensor continuously measures vibration and temperature at the asset it is fixed to. Those readings travel across the wireless mesh network formed by the Coolon luminaires, pass through a gateway and are fed back to a central dashboard that the superintendent can access remotely. When a reading moves outside its expected range, the system flags the asset early, giving the site time to plan a response before a developing fault turns into a failure.

Because the lighting network also carries the sensor data, the operation gains reliable site-wide connectivity without standing up a separate communications system to support it. The OPTIME C1 lubricators address one of the most common causes of bearing failure by dispensing grease 
automatically and consistently, removing both a frequent failure mode and a recurring reason to send someone to a remote site.

Installed within a day

Both the lighting and the monitoring layer were installed and commissioned during a single visit to site. For an operation where every hour of contractor time carries the added cost of travel and site access, completing the work in one mobilisation is a meaningful saving in its own right.

Why it matters

This deployment shows Coolon's connected lighting working as more than illumination. The same infrastructure that lights the site also carries its data, supports machine condition monitoring, drives automated lubrication and provides visual safety signalling. For operations managing remote or unmanned assets, a lighting network that delivers all of this from a single install is a very different proposition to lighting on its own.
Talk to our team about connected lighting for your site