Drilling & Blasting

While compliance to the burden and spacing of a drill pattern can be assessed visually, the real risks and rewards of drilling and blasting often lie hidden beneath the surface. If drill holes go too deep, or not deep enough, the subsequent bench might be uneven – resulting in unplanned site work, an uneven base for excavators, and cycle times disrupted due to blocked access between haul trucks and excavators.

In most mining functions, visual cues on-site are used as red flags for leadership to determine if immediate support is required. However, these visual triggers are lagging indicators, and a more proactive approach is needed in drilling and blasting to accurately assess the performance of your operations.

Key Client Challenges:

1. How do we minimize equipment downtime to decrease cycle time?
2. How do we improve blasting safety and ensure operators are complying with safety protocols?
3. How do we leverage real-time insights through drill and blast monitoring to detect issues faster?
4. How do we safely reduce downtime and delays before and after blasting events? How do we achieve better fragmentation to reduce downstream costs?
5. How do we ensure compliance with environmental regulations and community development requirements, such as dust suppression and noise vibration?

Key Indicators in Drilling & Blasting

How drill holes are charged cannot be accurately observed from the surface. It would be impossible to see if there has been backfill, water accumulation, or if a drill column has eroded or collapsed down below.

All of this can have an immediate impact on material fragmentation – resulting in slower loading times, additional passes needed by excavators, equipment wearing out, and longer queue times for haul trucks, which in turn leave excavators under-loaded.

The following are indicators a site may have room for improvement in drilling and blasting operations:

1. Standing water
2. Signs of rockfall
3. Stress-related excavator repairs
4. Seemingly insufficient equipment
5. Inconsistent blasting cost per ton
6. Tons per hour at the crusher
7. Misfired holes and poor area safety
8. Increasing or inconsistent cycle times

How Unison Mining Can Help

Continuous improvement efforts at the site can become frustrating when steps are taken to treat symptoms of the problem rather than focusing on its root cause. Effective and timely information is critical to the safety and productivity of any mining process.

By leveraging drill and blast monitoring through sensors, as well as historical data on geological formations, data analysis and predictive modeling can be used to optimize blast design, reduce wastage, and improve fragmentation. Behavioral change is also crucial for worker safety and compliance with protocols, particularly during blasting.

Unison Mining’s methods are designed to help your team measure and track your drill and blast operations accurately to identify gaps that need addressing – and to equip them with the tools to sustain process improvements long after a project’s closeout.