Editor’s Note LET’S WORK TOGETHER

For many, many years the mining industry considered itself a rugged, old survivor, able to endure the toughest of times. Of course, the industry hadn’t banked on the mini-holocaust handed us by the recession of the early 1980s. But our biggest surprise came when the recession ended for everyone but us. Then came the slow, painful realization that we were, in fact, not in a recession at all. We were faced with a fundamental change in the supply and demand commodities. The world was overproducing and we, the high-priced cousins, had to do something about it.

We knew we had to innovate, and we knew it was going to be the painful sort of innovation. It meant replacing men with machines — new machines which could increase both safety and productivity at the same time, machines which we never considered in the past because we didn’t really have to.

Take the drilling industry. While there were always minor improvements to bits and drill steel, the need for innovation in the 1980s has spawned an unprecedented generation of new ideas: automatic rod-changers, computer-programmed and driven drills, automatic bolters, laser-precision aim, remote operation and on and on.

One of the wildest ideas is featured on our cover: a rig that can lay out a screen, drill the holes and put in the rock bolts, all operated by remote control so that the miner never goes near a rock face. Developed by Spar Aerospace in conjunction with Inco Ltd., it will likely save many, many man-years of labor in the decades to come (especially at Inco, where all headings are screened off).

That an idea like this can be developed and put to work in such a short time is a tribute to the research arms of both Spar and Inco. But what is perhaps a bigger tribute is the joint venture itself. Canadian mines have not distinguished themselves in joint ventures with equipment manufacturers, Inco being one of the major exceptions. As a result we have not come up with anywhere near the number of ideas which smaller countries such as Finland and Sweden have.

In those countries you will frequently see manufacturers working very closely with mining companies on both idea development and equipment testing, concepts all too rare in Canadian mines. Let’s get with it. Those of you at mines who have an idea, take it to the manufacturers. Work with them to test it out. Don’t worry about spending the next five years and thousands of dollars securing the patent. Note Quintette’s work with Demag to improve that manufacturer’s hydraulic excavators (featured in our June, 1986, issue). Quintette wasn’t worried about royalties or patents when Demag said it intended to implement a number of Quintette’s suggestions onto its new line. The coal producer simply wanted to get the piece of equipment working.

Let’s start developing the kind of equipment we need for our own mines and stop letting others do it for us. The mine it saves may be your own.