Patent ID: 7810634

Claim:
A method of monitoring a moving conveyor belt in a conveyor belt system, the conveyor belt having a plurality of embedded reinforcing cords and a plurality of identification tags, the conveyor belt system having a tag reader for detecting and identifying the presence of an identification tag from among the plurality of identification tags passing by the tag reader and a belt monitoring system to detect a plurality of magnetic reference points, the method comprising: acquiring a belt location on the moving conveyor belt from a belt map based on a magnetic reference point from among the plurality of magnetic reference points as well as a detected and identified identification tag; scanning the cords of the conveyor belt using the belt monitoring system; analyzing data from the scanned cords to identify a damage event of at least one cord from among the plurality of cords in the conveyor belt; and in response to identifying the damage event, determining a location of the damage event based on the acquired belt location.