High-performance drilling is key to successful open-pit mining, with two principal areas of operation: blast-hole drilling, and drilling pre-split holes that help to enhance pit wall stability. These operations have different requirements, in terms of both their aim and the equipment used.

Blasthole drilling is an integral part of the production process and needs large, heavy drill rigs that can produce high meterage of often large diameter holes. These are then charged with bulk explosives, such as ANFO or emulsions, to produce broken rock that can be handled by the loading shovels.

Expertise Drilling In Open Pit Mines With DrillForce Drilling:

Drilling is carried out on a specifically defined grid system, taking into account the relationships between the hole diameter, the burden (the distance between each row of holes), and the spacing (the distance from hole to hole along the bench).

Historical Milestones In Open-pit Mining

Two main changes have occurred in open-pit mining technology over the past 100 years. The most obvious has been the increase in the scale of operations as higher capacity equipment has been developed. For instance, in the 1920s, a mining shovel with a 5 m3 bucket was exceptional. Today, large open pits use rope shovels or hydraulic excavators with bucket sizes of ten times that capacity.

The other big change which has occurred in trucksis  the evolution of transport systems. Mines have moved from rail-bound to haul truck and, in an increasing number of cases, to in-pit primary crushing of the ore (but not the waste rock) followed by conveyor belt transportation out of the pit.

In addition, in tandem with the growth in loading-shovel capacities, haul trucks have increased in size with the top-of-the-range 45 tons capacity hauler of the 1950s having been replaced by the 400 tons hauler that takes three-or four-pass loading from the current generation of shovels.