How to simplify drilling and blasting at your mine site

Drilling and blasting are at the heart of most mining operations. Ever since the origination of drill and blast in 1627 at a small Hungarian gold mine, drill and blast teams have experienced a vital, yet difficult job to accomplish. Making big rocks into smaller rocks is harder than it sounds.

There are important questions to consider like, how to determine your drill collar diameter? Or how much to charge for this drill pattern design? These questions demand well-informed answers; otherwise, the costs can quickly spiral out of control or there could be negative implications such as a secondary blast or unexpected downtime at the crusher.

Making data-driven decisions is easy with one central system

Drill and blast management solutions like BlastLogic can help drill and blast teams answer these sorts of questions based on data. These solutions hook into your existing systems and applications, gather important digital data like silent digital ninjas, then share the relevant information with you. The result? Your decision-making process is easier and better-informed than ever before. 

Imagine for a moment that you’ve designed a blast. Then, through the modelling and analysis tools included in BlastLogic, you can get an excellent idea of whether your blast will accomplish your objectives. 

Let’s say you’re most concerned about vibration because underground operations and surface infrastructure are located nearby. With this drill and blast management solution, you can model different variations of your design, tweaking this and that, until you are satisfied with the results. 

Now let’s imagine you’re satisfied with the design, and it’s time for the team in the field to do their thing. Wielding their BlastLogic tablet, the field team can easily access your most updated design and quickly get to work executing it. There’s no fuss about finding a particular piece of paper or deciphering illegible handwriting; instead, everything they need is at their fingertips on the tablet’s digital display. 

Meanwhile, BlastLogic is standing by, ready to give you information on your blast in real-time. So as the blast is executed, you’ll know immediately if things are going according to your plan or if something unexpected occurred. 

This is just one of the most exciting features of BlastLogic. It takes advantage of the integration of data across your entire drilling and blasting process and gives you a direct view of what you want to see based on your organization’s goals. Why is this so exciting? Because using a drill and blast solution in this way will yield better blasts by improving conformance to design. And better results for drill and blast are no small thing. 

Not only is fragmentation hugely important to milling throughput and the organization’s bottom line, but blast results also directly impact other team members outside of drill and blast, like short-term planners, for example. These roles and many others at the mine, rely on quality blast results to do their jobs effectively. Like a living ecosystem, every part of an operating mine is connected, which is why a holistic and digital approach to drill and blast is so important. And why operations that have adopted a drill and blast management solution have seen significant improvements. In fact, one operation has seen compliance to overall design rise by 23% across 142,000 hole records.

Now that we’ve mentioned some of what a drill and blast management system can do, let’s discuss what it absolutely should do.

What is a modern drill and blast management system?

Check out the following infographic to find out!

View the full infographic or download it as a PDF.

5 key components of management systems for drilling and blasting

Drill and blast management systems should provide a drill and blast team with the 5 key components mentioned in the infographic. To reiterate, those include:

• A single source of drill and blast data from one central software

• Interconnectivity between leaders and teams, even across departments

• Faster reconciliation and analysis post-blast

• Real-time capabilities and features to keep a pulse on what’s going on

• Accessibility and ease of use for new hires and experienced software users alike

Why are these 5 components so important? Because they give blast planners and engineers the ability to make quick and easy decisions based on facts and data.

Ultimately, systems like BlastLogic are all about enabling you and your team to make the best data-driven decisions possible within the constraints of an incredibly fast-paced production environment. 

Sounds valuable, right? 

That value is only increasing in the wake of what the mining industry is currently experiencing. We’re seeing unprecedented levels of high turnover and departures from the industry, with fewer and fewer applicants for mining jobs. During these times, investing in a solution that’s easily accessible to all types of users and requires minimal training is of critical importance. Sure the counterstatement here might be, “well, if things are so dire, why would we invest in new software we didn’t have before?” This is a fair point and, for some, a deal-breaker. However, some leaders seek to improve and develop their teams no matter the industry conditions. True leaders understand the value of investing in a solution that will make things better for their team not only in the present but also in the long-term, even if there’s a cost upfront. 

Don’t sacrifice quality results because of changes in the workforce. Instead, invest in a solution that will support and streamline drilling and blasting procedures making jobs easier and subsequently, making employees happier. Hopefully, those happier employees will stay on for a while. But even if they don’t stick around, any new hires can still be productive with a modern system like BlastLogic. With turnover rates at 3.12% for the mining industry, new people will likely be joining the team regularly. A simple, direct, and holistic approach to drilling and blasting with a modern blast management system is key to their success and yours.

Learn more about BlastLogic—check out the free ebook now!