Drill and Blast optimisation tools

There have been significant advances in the pursuit of getting accurate information on the state of the blast hole before blast loading. All these advances have been made because there are clear benefits to knowing the hole depth and water depth measurement. This information provides the drill and blast engineer or shot firer with information to ensure that the optimal blast loading can be performed.

What is the current state of the art?

Drill rigs can capture the depth of the hole that is drilled. The problem with this that the bench on any open cast mining site is never really flat and as such it can be very difficult to get accurate hole depths from the drill rig. It is also impossible for the drill rig to note when drill cuttings get blown or washed back into the hole. To get an accurate indication of the hole depth before blast loading, a dipping tape or tape measure is typically used to measure the depth of the hole. While this is a reasonable way to measure the hole depth of the blast hole, there are real difficulties in getting this data back to reconcile against the blast plan. In most open pit mining environments, the hole depths are scribbled on the blast plan by hand. In some open cut mining sites, the data is entered into a tablet or PDA software package. The form factor of these solutions means that a different person performs the hole dipping and another individual has to follow up and enter the hole depth data and the water depth measurement if this was taken. This is inefficient and provides an opportunity to make mistakes in data entry or hole identification.

What are the alternatives?

Iguana Industrial Solutions manufacture the benchm8 8550 hole dipper. This is an automated hole dipper that simplifies the hole dipping operation and is a significant improvement over dipping tape or tape measures. It also makes water depth measurement much simpler. Each measurement is automatically saved electronically on the benchm8 8550 hole dipper and this data can be accessed via USB or even wirelessly by Bluetooth. The data is stored in the versatile CSV format and can be easily imported into most drill and blast work flows.

Why bother changing what we do now?

Accurate knowledge of hole depth and water depth measurement allows for optimal drilling and blasting decisions. If a redrill is required, you want this information to be available as soon as possible and not just at the point when the blast hole is about to be loaded. The blast loading process can be more efficient and done at a lower cost when the correct amounts of explosives are loaded and the cheapest types of explosives are loaded whenever possible.

Open cut mining operations can get the best out of their drilling and blasting operations by ensuring that accurate blast hole information is available. Making use of hole depth and water depth measurement by using tools such as the Iguana Industrial Solutions benchm8 8550 hole dipper for hole dipping provide drill and blast operations with huge advantages.

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