Automation in BlastHole Drills: Enabling Optimization
Tyler Berens, Epiroc Drilling Solutions
Excitement and many questions are common reactions when discussing automating drilling operations that have predominantly always required full time human interaction. What are the reasons large, medium, and small mining houses are enabling drill automation? Where is the value found throughout the mining processes? How is data being used to drive these decisions? These questions will be addressed using global real world examples for the audience to visualize the impact automation is making in mine’s value chains. Our customer’s mines are walking through structured models to properly develop and deploy automated drills into their operations with great success. The change management blueprints continue to mature into repeatable processes for each mine to capitalize on previous learnings. This presentation will explore not just the automation portion, but how Automation implementation teams view the mine as a manufacturing process utilizing data to gain its advantages. Automation is a journey. We will conclude with where this journey may go in the near future given the tremendous opportunities automation offers
Keywords:
Automation, Blasthole, Drill
