Improving drill and blast workflow

Maptek Africa has integrated Sasol’s IBIS bulk explosive truck control system with the Maptek BlastLogic drill & blast system. Sasol is an integrated energy and chemicals company based in Sandton, South Africa. Sasol’s commercial explosives products and opencast services are employed by Southern Africa’s leading mining houses.

The integration has enabled the BlastLogic Tablet, which dynamically updates drill and blast plans in the field, to communicate directly with IBIS to control explosives loading.

The charge plan from the BlastLogic Tablet is pushed to the IBIS-controlled Smart MMU (Mobile Manufacturing Unit) specifying the exact amount of explosive that needs to be pumped into each hole in the drill and blast plan in real time in the field.

In an environment where a slip of the finger can waste time, be costly and potentially dangerous, this integration removes the need for manual data entry – saving time, preserving data integrity and increasing safety.

Operators’ jobs are made easier by removing the need to manually enter data but they are still able to use their judgement to override the automated figure based on environmental changes.

If there is a variation to the amount of explosive this information is automatically updated in BlastLogic.

Operators are safer and have more time to pump explosives and analyse what’s happening.

The auditable and trackable process provides a simplified workflow and information is populated and generated on the fly.

Incorporating the Smart MMU information is industry-leading and consolidates BlastLogic’s role as a single source of truth for drill and blast management.

BlastLogic allows the entire drill and blast process to be collated in one place so the information can be analysed and opportunities for improvement can be identified.

Developers from Maptek and Sasol worked together to develop a data sharing format and progressed through collaborative testing to ensure a robust solution.

Controlled testing has been successfully completed and the integrated solution will be available to the first clients in June 2019.

Maptek will continue to explore further integration and collaboration with partners such as Sasol.