Cooperation and collaboration solves mining issue
New drill bit recovery process saving time and money
The OneSteel crews at the Southern Middleback Range iron ore operation have had another big win with another great example of cooperation and collaboration.
Taking aim at a long-term issue of broken drill bits when creating blast holes, the OneSteel Manufacturing (Administrators Appointed) (OneSteel) mining crew approached contractors SRG to work out a solution for a problem that was creating major time and operational headaches while also costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time, resources and operational hours.
This simple process is now potentially saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars and most importantly, it has eliminated the very dangerous risk of this metal being ejected if it made it into the crusher
Matt Vasey
The 165mm diameter tungsten steel hardened drill bits used to break up the ground and create drill holes are a consumable item that eventually break off from the rods that hold them and are often lost in the ground.
Iron Ore Operations Superintendent Production Planning, Matt Vasey explained that these metal drill bits, if left in the ground, have the potential to cause a major safety risk to the fixed crusher operators and significant damage.
“Not only can they cause costly damage to the crushing operations and down time, it presents a critical danger to our personnel when the crusher spits out the offending piece of drill metal,” he said.
“To prevent this in the past, we were forced to survey the area when the drill bit broke off, redirect hundreds of tonnes of dirt to a quarantined stockpile and then flatten out the dirt to then do multiple sweeps with a metal detector over multiple layers to find the drill bit.
“It is often not possible to find the shanked drill bits which means we have to either throw the ore out or take the risk of feeding it through the crusher pending the grade of material as per GET procedure.
“This alone can take up to a day racking even more costs in fuel, labour and machine hours which can become costly very quickly.”
Working with the SRG Project Manager Oli Tusku, they did their research and found a fairly simple and cheap part (no more than a few hundred dollars) that was able to be attached to the end of the rod to go back down into the hole and pick up the broken metal.
“We tasked SRG with the challenge to fix this issue, we committed to working with them to find a solution and they came through with flying colours,” Matt said.
“As of now, we have now used this tool six times and had a 83% per cent success rate in retrieving the broken drill bits.
“This simple process is now potentially saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars and most importantly, it has eliminated the very dangerous risk of this metal being ejected if it made it into the crusher.”
Matt thanked Oli and his SRG team and the OneSteel crew for the combined effort and successful outcome.
“This shows how working together as a business with a valued stakeholder, this time our contractor, can achieve great results for the operation and everyone involved,” Matt said.
Main picture and above right: An operator shows how the new tool works. Top right: The tool used to extract the drill bits. Below: A partial drill bit retrieved from a drill hole by the new tool.
