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Blast Pattern Compliance

Assess drill pattern compliance more effectively through accurate monitoring

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Overview

Deviations from blast designs can result in increased operational costs for mines, often due to geological conditions and choice of explosives. Designing consistent blast patterns can pose challenges, with various factors such as material density, fault lines, and contaminants influencing blast outcomes.

To address these issues, many mining companies are turning to drilling and blasting technologies and equipment to achieve pattern compliance. However, these companies often miss the basic disciplines to deliver compliance to burden, depth, and spacing.

In many cases, excavators are deployed before recording actual results to the planned burden, depth, spacing, and penetration rate, and the integrity of the drill hole. It is crucial to optimize existing information and investments before considering additional or different technologies. The ability to act quickly on lessons learned is fundamental to improving both blast pattern compliance and future profitability.

Key Client Challenges

Are there ways to use data analytics to identify trends in our drilling and blasting data that can inform better pattern compliance strategies?

How can we address geological variability while adapting our drilling and blasting techniques and blast design optimization?

What are the best practices for training our drillers and blasters to ensure they understand the importance of pattern compliance and can execute it effectively?

How YCP Unison Can Help

By investing in monitoring technologies such as seismographs and drones to assess the impact of blasts, adjustments can be made as needed to blasting operations for improved pattern compliance. However, the adoption of these technologies is only the first step. Buy-in from management and employees at all organizational levels is equally important to ensure that new technologies are deployed effectively for blast design optimization.

At YCP Unison, our goal is to foster an environment of continuous improvement, where lessons learned from each drilling and blasting operation are used to refine processes including blast plan preparation and field testing, enhancing blast pattern compliance over time.