I, Robot

Standing in the yard of Tamrock’s expanding manufacturing plant in Tampere, Finland, James McCormack, a project mine engineer for Placer Development rolls his eyes at a computerized jumbo being demonstrated for us. Tamrock introduced the 2-boom drill rig last year. It can operate in a mine heading completely unattended. “The next thing we’ll need is to build a gymnasium at our mine,” he jokes, “just to keep our miners fit.”

He’s bemoaning the fact that a proliferation of automatic rod- changers and joy-stick-controlled hydraulic booms is robbing the underground hardrock miner of an honest day’s work. These relatively simple mechanical devices are not only making production drilling underground easier for miners; they have made it faster and far more accurate than even the best “high-baller” can achieve with a jackleg and stoper. But can Canadian mines justify the high capital costs needed in order to own these highly automated machines? Forecasts which suggest metals prices won’t pick up for some time to come make one thing clear: mines can not afford to ignore modern drilling machines.

In the months and years ahead, production drilling machines will likely become even smarter as the level of automation increases. Examples of this trend include the introduction of down-the-hole inclinometers and transducers linked to an operator panel by microwave; bubble sort memory cartridges which record machine performance; and machine vision systems, which enable automatic rock- bolting machines to recognize discontinuity patterns on rock surfaces so that the most efficient roof-bolting strategy can be selected and executed.

Developments like these, which are in either the conceptual or early prototype stage, require the co-operative efforts of experts in both the mining and so-called “high-technology” industries. At least two such efforts were made in 1986: one between Inco Ltd. and Spar Aerospace; the other between the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology canmet and Vadeko International.

The Inco-Spar linkage has developed a prototype machine that automatically drills holes and installs mechanical rock bolts and wire mesh sceen while placing the operator a safe distance away. The canmet- Vedeko linkage has developed the instrumentation for a prototype in- the-hole machine which monitors itself as it drills. Eventually such a machine should be able to automatically adjust rotation speed and pressure on the bit to optimize drilling advance and minimize hole-wandering.

A prototype of the rock-bolting and screening machine (rbs) was unveiled by J. D. Stratton in October, 1986, at a symposium on mine automation held in Sudbury. Stratton is project manager for Spar Aerospace. The rbs prototype has been mounted on the bucket support booms and dump cylinder of a JS500 scoop-tram. The unit has been designed to drill 6-ft holes on a 60×30-in pattern using a hydraulic drifter with air-water flushing. The hydraulic control module incorporates an anti-jamming feature, Stratton says.

The machine can install up to 18 6-ft rock bolts which are stored in a carousel and 35 ft of 9-gauge wire mesh screen which is dispensed from a roll six ft wide. A screen-cutting assembly shears the screen from the roll after each bolting sequence.

The machine was designed to operate in mine openings 14 ft wide and 14 ft high. It is powered by 550-VAC, 3-phase electric power through a cable connected to the site supply. All hydraulic mechanisms are controlled by a programmable industrial controller (a Gould No. 884 controller module). Electronic sensors which can detect the presence or absence of metal near their face surfaces relay valuable information to the controller. The machine is now undergoing testing at several Inco mines in Sudbury and has so far installed about 500 bolts.

The canmet-Vadeko linkage has developed a prototype of a high-tech, 4-component system designed to improve the accuracy of in-the-hole drilling. Three years ago, when Joy Manufacturing closed its Advanced Development Centre in Cambridge, Ont., Innes Grantmyre, who is now program manager for Vedeko, made an unsolicited proposal to hdrk, the multi-company research advisory board. He then negotiated a deal with canmet to fund development. All the technology was developed by Vedeko.

Once perfected, it should allow mine engineers to increase the height of vertical retreat mining (vrm) stopes by adding to the accuracy of initial drill set-ups and providing accurate information on blasthole deviation. This should, in turn, lower vrm stope development costs.

To accurately position a drill rig over a drilling target, the operator of a rig outfitted with the instrumentation developed by Vadeko would first enter the collar co-ordinates into a control panel mounted on the rig. Then, by aiming a laser inclinometer at two or more survey markings in a stope and entering their identification numbers into the controller, the miner can position the rig over the planned collar according to instructions from the microprocessor display. The display also indicates the required dip and swing angles for the drill mast of that particular hole.

To report hole-wander as drilling is going ahead, two electronic inclinometers (Sperry Accustars) with a 0.001 degrees sensitivity have been packaged, along with a power supply and a microwave transmission system, in a shock- resistant housing which is lowered down the hole with the drill hammer. When drilling is stopped in order to add rods, for example, data is transmitted along the drill rod to a microprocessor housed in the operator’s control panel. The microprocessor compares calculated hole deviation with stored data on planned hole dip and bearing. If it is unacceptable, the operator is warned and can decide whether the drill should be retracted. Microwave transmission of data was chosen because it is insensitive to metallic ore and because drill string curvature will not affect transmission.

Vadeko has outfitted one drill rig (a Continuous Mining Systems CD-90 rig, supplied by Inco) and is testing it at the Copper Cliff North mine in Sudbury. It will then be up to Vedeko and canmet to sit down and hammer out a marketing agreement for selling the technology.

If the problem of hole deviation can be solved through automation of in-the-hole machines, the next step would be to increase air pressures from 250 lb per sq in, says Ronald Crebo, sales manager for Ingersoll Rand Canada (Dorval, Que.). Pressures could be increased up to 350 psi by introducing screw-type booster compressors underground to replace the piston types used now. “The hammers and bits in use today will take the extra pounding,” Crebo says.

In fact, in 1986 Ingersoll Rand introduced a new in-the-hole hammer called the Strike Force 6. Built of the same basic parts as the company’s popular DHD-360, but with a slightly larger piston, this new hammer can drill blastholes 10%-20% faster, Crebo says. Horsepower and air requirements remain the same. This unit may eventually replace the old model.

Ingersoll Rand is experimenting with radio-remote-control, in-the-hole drill rigs with new button bits for drilling in highly abrasive rock. The company’s CMM-2 in-the-hole rig is now available with electric drive.

Another major mining company, Noranda Inc., is looking around for potential contractors to build an entirely new drilling machine. It would be used in a new mining method devised by Pamour Inc. and Noranda, says Jacques Nantel, head of Noranda’s mining technology division. The concept, which could be used in large, tabular, steeply dipping orebodies, involves using a raise bore machine to cut a vertical slice through an orebody. Then, by drilling holes into the walls of the raise from a drilling rig suspended in the opening, ore would be blasted into the raise and dropped to a drawpoint below.

Besides these uniquely Canadian efforts in drilling automation, significant strides are being made by four multi-national corporations which dominate the production drilling field through subsidiary companies in Canada. A Low-profile Bolte
r

Sudbury-based Boart Canada, a subsidiary of Boart International of South Africa, has embarked on an ambitious program of custom drill rig design for both surface and underground mining. Although it is relatively new to the drill rig manufacturing business, this aggressive company has a fistfull of projects on the go.

Its aim, says Manager Garry Miller, is to produce no-frills, cost-effective, practical machines for a diverse mining market. The machines are, by and large, compact and simple — perhaps too simple. Nowhere in this company’s shop can you find automatic rod-changing carousels or sophisticated microprocessor controls — components which Boart says contribute to the high capital costs of equipment (costs which most Canadian mines cannot afford). Control panels on umbilical cords are used, however.

* One of Boart’s projects is the building of a prototype machine in order to test the concept of using its hydraulic drifters for longhole production drilling. “If it costs a mining company twice as much for a hydraulic drill,” says Peter Larson, technical marketing manager, “we figure it should be capable of drilling twice as fast in order for a mining company to justify the expense.”

Boart’s plan is to mount one of its hd series hydraulic drills on a new rubber-tired carrier, similar to the popular BCI-2, sometime in the new year. The purpose is to test the drill in a longhole production situation — probably on one of the company’s many contract drilling projects.

Boart’s contract drilling division, which has about 50 people working in the field, drills some 190,000 ft a month at the Mattabi mine; the Dome mine in Timmins; Kerr Addison’s mine in Virginiatown; Lac Mineral’s Macassa division; the Golden Giant mine at Hemlo; and the Abcourt mine in Val d’Or. The prototype rig will be called the BCI-3H.

Also, last year Boart bought the pneumatic drilling assets of Joy Manufacturing to complement its line of hydraulic drifters.

* Early last month Boart shipped a $160,000 roof-bolting machine (the bds-r 03-21) to the Denison mine in Elliot Lake, Ont. Custom-designed for the narrow mining conditions being encountered as the Elliot Lake deposit is mined to depth, this rig can drill holes and install 6-ft mechanical or split-set roof bolts in a mine opening only eight ft high. An operator can stand up to 150 ft away while the machine drills and installs bolts. For this reason, engineers at Inco and Falconbridge Ltd. have expressed an interest in the machine. In August hardrock miner Richard Kerr was killed at Inco’s Garson Mine while installing roof bolts with a hand-held stoper.

* A third project is now in the conceptual stage. Boart has teamed up with Continuous Mining Systems (cms), which is located on the same road in Sudbury. The companies plan to mount two hydraulic drill booms on either side of the chain conveyor belt of a cms Oscilloader. The unit would combine the functions of a 2-boom jumbo and those of a high- production, continuous mucking machine.

Early last year Boart’s Miller decided to set up a machine to tap the lucrative coal mining market in China. He and Dale Letts, president of cms, financed a $15,000 scale model of the machine and took it to the Mining China International Exhibition in Peking in September, 1986. He has received two formal invitations from the Chinese to return for a visit and a number of Chinese coal representatives visited Boart’s Sudbury offices last December.

All the components needed to make the machine now exist. All that’s needed to put the machine into production is a client.

The purchase late last year of Stromnes ab, a Swedish manufacturer of hydraulic booms and feeds, by Boart’s Finland-based competitor, Tamrock, has caused Boart some concern. The purchase cancels a contract between Stromnes and Boart to market their products together. Although it is too early to say, Boart will likely develop the in-house expertise to manufacture its own booms.

Before the purchase was announced, Boart took a $550,000 order to build two 2-boom jumbos for Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting’s Namew Lake mine in Manitoba. The units will incorporate a Minejack M40 carrier and a Stromnes stb-50 boom which has a 360 degrees rotation head. Delivery is set for May.

* For open pit mining, Boart has fitted a hydraulic drill boom to an excavator and developed a remote control console for operating the drill from outside the excavator cab. The drill could be used for drilling rock- and cable-bolting holes in pit walls or for drilling and blasting oversize boulders. The system is considerably cheaper than using hydraulic rock- breakers to break oversize boulders in a surface mine.

* Boart is also participating in a potentially important technological advance in dry drilling. Mines such as the Lupin, Polaris and Nanisivik, which are in areas of permafrost, already use dry drilling to some extent. But, despite its advantages in drilling performance and costs, the method is not generally practiced in the industry.

In co-operation with Ilmeg System ab of Sweden, Boart is marketing a chamber-type dust filter which removes dust at the collar of a drill hole, using a suction capacity of 1,300 cu ft per min at 5,000 rpm. Hose lengths can be up to 38 ft. Unlike other filtering units, the Ilmeg system is self-cleaning in that it uses a blast of reverse air flow to clean the filters when the drill machine is shut down. When drilling in ore, coarse and fine particles can be used by mine geologists for assaying purposes or they can be returned to the mill.

Cubex, a drill manufacturer in Winnipeg, Man., is testing the units on in-the-hole blasthole drills at Inco’s underground mine in Thompson, and Boart plans to test the units on a jumbo drilling application soon. “Most manufacturers agree that drilling without water increases bit life and results in better penetration rates of up to 15%,” says Stephen Pack, Ilmeg’s export manager.

Another Ilmeg product being marketed by Boart is a simple, electronic angle indicator that attaches to a drill boom. Costing $20,000, the units come with a clock face read-out unit which is installed in the operator’s booth. The units pay for themselves in a matter of months by maximizing advance, reducing overbreak, giving better opening profiles and reducing scaling, Pack says.

Three units have been sold to Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting’s Trout Lake mine in northern Manitoba. Experts in Hydraulic

Tamrock is also making its presence known on the Canadian mining scene — in a big way. Tamrock Canada, with offices in four Canadian cities, is just one of seven subsidiaries this Finnish company has spawned worldwide over the past 15 years.

Its technological expertise is hydraulic drilling, which the company serves up in a wide range of drilling rigs. Tamrock claims it surged past arch-rival Atlas Copco (based across the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden) last year by capturing 35% of world rock- drilling sales (in both the mining and construction industries).

In 1985 the company generated sales of $187.5 million compared to less than $25 million 10 years ago. About 15% of all sales go to the U.S.S.R., with 10% going to Sweden and Norway and 5% going to Canada.

Last year alone Tamrock sold 150 underground drilling jumbos worldwide. Snc Group, a major, Montreal- based engineering company, ordered nine 2-boom and nine 3-boom jumbos plus nine rock-bolting rigs from Tamrock early last year. They will be used on the multi-million-dollar Chamera hydroelectric power development project in India.

Tamrock offers drilling jumbos for a wide range of tunnel sizes, from 3.3 m to 14.0 m wide. The company’s S-class jumbos have 30% more drill capacity than any other drilling system available, the company says. Its latest hydraulic drill, model HL-538, for example, gets about 150 m of advance per shift at one of Outokumpu’s copper-zinc mines, at Pyhasalmi, Finland. And three S-class jumbos (the Minematic hs 205 m) equipped with HL-538 drills are used for ramp and level development work at the Lupin mine on Contwoyto Lake, N.W.T.

John West, Echo Bay Mines’ mine c
aptain at Lupin, says the machines can drill two 15-ft rounds in a 12-hour shift. There are 48 1 3/4 -in holes and three 3 1/2 -in holes in each round and headings measure 13×11 ft. In ore, it takes an hour longer to drill a round.

Tamrock manufactures four models of booms which give coverage from 28 to 112 sq m. Tamrock also makes a number of long-hole drilling rigs for drilling blastholes ranging in diameter from 48 mm to 127 mm.

Inco’s Frood-Stobie mine in Sudbury bought three of these machines in 1985 to drill 4 1/2 -in holes in sublevel caving stopes below the mine’s open pit. One single-boom Solo H 808 ra (a rigid-framed, diesel- powered carrier with electro-hydraulic drilling with one drifter) replaced two 2-boom, pneumatic fan drills. The lower energy consumption of the new machine brought down energy costs by an average of 3 degrees per ton, mine superintendent Gary MacLean says.

Roughly 70% of the mine’s 8,000- ton daily production comes from sublevel caving, about half of which is now drilled with the Solo. Production averages more than 675 ft per 2-shift day in rock which is weak and fractured.

Tamrock’s flagship this year is a computerized 3-boom jumbo called Datamatic. Designed specifically to meet the demands of the big, international market for civil tunnelling projects (hydroelectric, subway and railway), this rig can semi-automatically drill an entire drift round measuring 14 m across and 8.5 m high. The operator simply collars the hole to avoid bootlegs. The programmable rig then brings the bottom of the hole back to the same place as designated by the original layout. Advantages include longer, more accurate rounds and more efficient advances.

“Drilling patterns can now be done like they should be, rather than at the whim of an operator,” sales manager Raimo Palin says. Once the company has a grip on this bigger market, it will probably build a smaller, computer- controlled machine suitable for smaller-scale mine openings.

For Canadian mines, however, there is a more practical machine. The H690, recently developed by Tamrock, fully mechanizes the cable-bolting cycle. This one-man rig, equipped with an automatic rod-changer that can hold up to 17 4-ft rods, can drill 40-m holes with an HL-645 drifter and install 15.2-mm steel cable bolts to give ground support of 25 tons each. Two cables can be installed in one hole to double the support.

In July, 1986, Falconbridge Ltd. became the first Canadian company to buy the machine — for its Fraser mine in Sudbury, which uses blast hole open-stoping methods. With production scheduled to hit one million tons a year by 1990, the Fraser mine will be installing more than 100,000 ft of cement-grouted cable bolts every year — about 200 ft per shift. Hole depths vary with ore outlines, but the maximum is expected to be 65 ft. A 250-kg mixer on the cable-bolter supplies grout mixed in a ratio of 0.3 parts water to one part cement. The machine’s cable reel holds a one-week supply of 1,000 m. First Automatic Boom Movements

The first drill manufacturer to introduce automatic boom movements to the mining market was Atlas Copco, early in 1984. In 1982 the same company introduced the first commercial longhole drilling unit that adds rods automatically (the Simba longhole rig).

Atlas Copco’s latest automatic drilling jumbo is called the Robot Boomer 135. Equipped with two cop 1238 electro-hydraulic drifters on but 35RC booms, the Robot Boomer can drill mine faces ranging in area from 20 sq m to 90 sq m.

Unlike Tamrock’s Datamatic, this jumbo can collar holes automatically and can move its two booms from hole to hole completely unattended. By mirroring asymmetrical drill patterns from one round to the next, the Robot Boomer can also avoid bootlegs automatically.

“A good operator is always needed, however, to start the machine up and to manually drill holes which the system can’t drill because of slippage on a rock face,” says Peter Henricsson of Atlas Copco. The rig will make three attempts to collar a hole and then move six inches away if unsuccessful. This way, one operator can run a number of rigs in different headings. If one boom has a mechanical breakdown, it will automatically lie down and “play dead” while the other boom drills the entire round. The rig cannot change bits automatically or add rods, however.

The system does have the capability of monitoring itself. If sensors and transducers indicate a hole is starting to wander, the rig will increase the pressure or flow on one of the boom’s hydraulic cylinders to compensate for the deviation.

Like the Datamatic, however, the high capital cost (about $1 million for a 2-boom unit) has, so far, discouraged sales in the mining sector. Henricsson estimates it will take about two years of constant drilling for the rig to pay for itself. Atlas Copco is experimenting with drilling and blasting 24-ft rounds to make the rigs more economical.

The company, with distributors in all provinces, has two major manufacturing plants in the Montreal suburbs of Pointe Claire and Baie d’Urfe. The latter opened in May, 1986 — 10 years after the Pointe Claire plant. The new plant is used to manufacture hydraulic and pneumatic drilling equipment as well as the company’s Swellex roof bolts which, according to Atlas, are enjoying a rapidly expanding market. The company also markets Sandvik Coromant drill steel and bits, including Sandvik raise bore heads.

Two other multi-national drilling manufacturers, Monabert and Secoma, market their products in Canada. Sudbury-based Eimco Canada, which markets Secoma hydraulic drills, and Jarvis Clark, which marketed Monabert drilling equipment, officially amalgamated in August, 1986. The amalgamated company, Eimco-Jarvis Clark, has consequently decided to drop the Monabert line and concentrate its marketing efforts on the Secoma line. Both are manufactured in France.

Continuous Mining Systems (Walden, Ont.) has become the exclusive distributor of Monabert drilling equipment.

Secoma, with just four drills operating in the country, hasn’t been marketed aggressively enough, says Jack Thomson, manager of drilling for Eimco-Jarvis Clark. “Secoma has sold some 2,000 jumbos wordwide, so it is probably the third largest drill manufacturer,” he says. With the amalgamation, Eimco-Jarvis Clark has the branch offices and service people to do a more thorough marketing job in this country. Jarvis Clark has nine branch offices across the country. Thomson says the company will probably concentrate on two key Secoma units — the Pluton 24C (a large, 2-boom hydraulic jumbo) and the Helios 12 (a small, narrow-vein jumbo only 1.4 m wide).

Kidd Creek Mines, in Timmins, has a Pluton 17, automated resin-rebar- bolter. It’s equipped with a Hydrastar 200 drifter and a carousel capable of holding 10 roof bolts. The other Secoma drills operating in Canada are in an underground salt mine on the Magdeleine Islands, operated by Mines Seleine, a subsidiary of soquem (Societe Quebecoise Exploration Miniere).

Secoma is working on automated rod-handling as well as developing a small (mining scale), computerized, drilling jumbo, Thomson says.

Another multi-national manufacturer, Gardner Denver, completed a 3-year consolidation of its drill- manufacturing facilities under one roof in Virginia last year. (We regret that Gardner Denver was unable to contribute to this article).