WHAT’S NEW: FERROMAGNETIC MONITOR
A Compact PLC Idec Canada is marketing a compact programmable “logic controller” (PLC) manufactured in Japan. The units, ideal for replacing relay and timer circuits, are being distributed in Canada b…
1990
FREE TRADE OPTIMISM
FREE TRADE OPTIMISM The following is from a speech delivered to the Mineral Development Forum in early December last year in Toronto by Maureen Farrow, a partner of the Coopers & Lybrand Consulting Gr…
THIS LAND IS WHOSE LAND?: There is no easy solution to the problem
It wasn’t the type of crowd Monte Hummel was used to addressing. Gamely, the president of the World Wildlife Fund stood before the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Ca…
SUPPLIER’S NOTES (May 01, 1990)
A contract has been awarded by the International Magnesium Association to the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET) for a 4-year project to study the fundamental aspects of the corr…
RUNNING ON EMPTY
Not long ago, the larger Canadian gold mining companies were content to report two to three year’s worth of reserves at their individual mines. The practice, I was recently told by a mining veteran, b…
HIGH-TECH OPERATIONS — THE MANLESS MILL
Distributed control systems (DCS) were introduced in the mid-1970s, according to Isabelle Clauzier and Burton Roberts of B.R.I.C. Systems Integrators, who delivered a paper on the subject at an operat…
NATIVE TALENTS
I read, with great interest and some dismay the article “Native Miners” by Erik Watt (NMM, Feb/90), which dealt with the involvement of native persons in northern mine operations. I feel their natural…
AND THERE’S STILL MORE
The 04 break (in underground Tnomenclature) or Kirkland Lake Main break (as it’s more widely known) has been the source of gold ore for Macassa for the past 57 years. It is the same break that nurture…
A HIGH-TECH HORROR STORY
In March, 1989, a miner was killed at Noranda’s Lyon Lake mine in Ontario when a load-haul-dump machine (LHD), controlled by a radio frequency remote control, scooped him up and drove over a 24-metre …
HIGH-TECH UNDERGROUND MANLESS MINES; As the industry shifts to
The Boy Scouts’ motto, “Be prepared,” is equally applicable to today’s mining industry as more and more companies struggle to adapt to new trends. Four years ago, the industry began a shift toward so-…
Rx FOR IMPROVEMENTS
The following is an excerpt from the plenary session paper presented at the recent maintenance engineering conference held in Sudbury, Ont. The conference was sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Mi…
MINING THE BIG BREAK
A disquieting number of rock bursts and the usual creaks and groans of a deep mine once were the daily fare for miners at lac Mineral’s Macassa mine, near Kirkland Lake, Ont. They still contend with r…