Case Study: Optimisation of Drill & Blast
Industry
Coal Mining
Region
North America
Location
British Columbia Canada
Application
P&H 4100 electric rope shovel
Customer Profile
Truck and shovel open pit operations with 7 electric rope shovels
Situation
Managing loading equipment performance and mining cost are complicated, given the ever-changing complexity of the environment, performance of the equipment, and hundreds of people interactions. Mine was eager to reduce variability in shovel performance while reducing mining cost through optimizing drill and blast practices.Solution
RIGIDprecision™ platform from RIGID ROBOTICS provided scalable real-time data from shovel which was sent to the cloud where an advanced Digging Condition Index was geospatially generated in near real-time from the data stream. Our application then provided D&B engineers with direct insight into D&B optimization sought.Pilot Duration
3 months (October – January)Availability
RIGIDprecision™ platform availability: 99.99% of shovel availabilityBenefits:
- Enabling the adjustment of blast pattern designs for optimal results
- Allow to link drill and blast quality to shovel productivity and machine health
- Reducing use of explosives, blasting costs, and equipment wear
- Helping to maximize productivity of shovels
- Lessening impact on environment
Impact:
- 10-15% Powder Factor Reduction
- 10% reduction in dig time
- $0.5-5M p.a cost reduction based on varying baseline
