HIGH PROFILE
and has received widespread praise and acceptance from operators and maintenance personnel.
Q How did the Pybar opportunity come about and where are they currently using JumboGuard?
An offsider safely working in the danger zone as JumboGuard has disabled all boom movement
Indeed, we are currently seeing demand from the industry to utilise this technology on other pieces of equipment. JumboGuard is not confined to development drills as the system can operate on all equipment types where it is required to isolate the workings of the machine when a person enters the danger zone.
Q Is the market demand for JumboGuard mainly related to the fact that there has been limited success and / or industry take-up of fully automated drill jumbo options?
In recent years OEMs have continuously automated certain tasks, but it is going to take quite some time until these types of machines are fully automated without the need for people working underground altogether. There have been attempts to develop engineering solutions for automatic boom isolation, but customers report that these efforts were causing false triggers and inadvertent machine shutdowns, as the technology used was too susceptible to spray and dust. Since we introduced a working solution to the market we have seen strong demand from mining companies and contract miners who want to make their operations safer and therefore retrofit their existing fleets as well as newly purchased machines.
Q Can you describe the initial approach by Downer in terms of why they felt they needed an innovation like this, and briefly talk about
The main JumboGuard system components in red learnings and successes at their contract sites in Cosmo and elsewhere? Are they now using it as standard at all of their UG contract sites?
Our JumboGuard journey started when Downer EDI Mining approached us after conducting a risk assessment on their mobile underground drill rigs which identified a high potential of serious injury or fatality. After a site visit and the analysis of several days worth of recorded data we were convinced that YUMARR would be able to develop a working solution. Downer offered the testing ground at Kirkland Gold’ s Cosmo mine site in the Northern Territory – including the drills, the operating crews as well as mining expertise to facilitate system proving. Allowing the system development to take place under real operating conditions was a major factor achieving a seamless integration into the operational workflow and an outstanding system performance. Downer states that“ JumboGuard delivers significant safety benefits for mining companies around Australia.” JumboGuard has since developed into an out-of-thebox product that can be installed on any kind of underground drill. This has been an important step enabling the mining industry to retrofit JumboGuard, making underground mines a safer place. JumboGuard has now been rolled out across Downer’ s entire fleet of development drills
Contract mining company Pybar runs an exceptional future mining project at Oz Minerals’ Carrapateena mine in South Australia with the ultimate vision of becoming Australia’ s first fully autonomous mine. Striving for greater productivity, efficiency and safety, Pybar decided to implement the latest innovative technologies. After the successful implementation of JumboGuard at Carrapateena, the system is now also in use at their Auctus Minerals’ King Vol mine project in Queensland and at Mt Lyell in Tasmania.
Q What are your plans for 2018 and beyond with JumboGuard?
We are very excited about the overwhelming recognition of JumboGuard in Australia, where the system has won two important industry prizes in 2017 in the form of the Safety System Innovation and Excellence in Mine Safety OH & S awards. As we are an Australian company we focused on our local market first. Meanwhile, we are receiving a lot of interest from overseas. The next step is to introduce the system into other countries. To achieve this, we have been fortunate to find with Murray Engineering an experienced technical distributor for JumboGuard operating in projects in a number of important mining countries.
Q Aside from JumboGuard, are there other interesting projects in mining YUMARR is currently involved in? Can you update us on these programmes?
Aside from JumboGuard, we are currently working on a number of innovative projects with engineering companies for which we are developing highly specialised customised solutions, but we are also working with many of the big players of the mining industry. As an example, we have become a technology partner with Rio Tinto in their drill of the future project, where we have developed the situational awareness system for their autonomous drills. We also have entered in an exciting cooperation project with Epiroc( formerly Atlas Copco Mining and Rock Excavation Technique) to developed the object detection and ground profiling system Pit Viper Guard, designed as part of the full automation of their Pit Viper rotary blasthole drills. IM
FEBRUARY 2018 | International Mining 71