SURFACE DRILLING
FLANDERS recently delivered the first of four ARDVARC remote autonomous support trailers to Anglo American ' s Mogalakwena platinum mine to support the Sandvik drill fleet it has converted
Vale , Rio Tinto and many others . Back then the major OEMs were more focused on underground drill automation ; and surface automation wasn ’ t yet a big focus . They didn ’ t yet see it as a core part of their business . But this customer and others saw what FLANDERS was able to do on an OEM machine . So from then on our growth was customer driven – mines seeing what we did and wanting the same thing on more drills and mixed ages and models of drills .”
Over the progression of ARDVARC ’ s development , there have been various iterations and new functionalities to get it to where it is today . The basic level is just data collection using DRILLWISE which lets you advance your drills ’ capabilities , without automation , using highprecision GPS blasthole positioning together with hole-by-hole drill cycle data . Then there is INTELLI-RIG , which combines a control system and data collection . It is a manually operated FLANDERS drill control system ( DCS ) which advances your equipment and operator ’ s capabilities , using high-precision GPS blasthole positioning , together with hole-by-hole drill cycle data . Then you have ONE TOUCH where you convert a manually operated drilling cycle to a totally automated drilling cycle with ‘ one-touch ’ of a button . Lastly you can fully automate your current drills and enable a single person to manage as a rule of thumb up to eight or nine machines remotely , though there is actually no technical limit to that number . This can be line of sight or from a command centre in a remote ops facility .
Formerly the system involved toggling between multiple screens to view drills and data – " today you can see the main drill you are monitoring on one screen but at the same time all the other drills are still visible on tabs – of everything is fine the tab is green but if there is an issue it turns red , then they just click on it and then that drill will become the main view . FLANDERS can supply the complete autonomous drill operator command centre , or often just the chair and direct controls interface part , with the customer supplying their own server , computer screens etc to fit with their standardised set up .”
FLANDERS product specialists carry out ARDVARC training for both operations and maintenance . In Australia , for example , the operations training element is generally done at the customer ’ s operator customer command centre itself . Maintenance training is carried out at FLANDERS ’ Perth facility on a simulator . There is a similar set up in other parts of the world like South Africa and Brazil . There are three maintenance training levels – basic , intermediate and advanced .
Are more mines now going straight to full autonomy rather than taking a stepping stone approach ? “ It depends on each customer and their culture – some look at the overall autonomy investment and want to go to full autonomy straight away because it is proven and they want the productivity benefits as soon as possible without any interim direct operator intervention . Others prefer to start with ONE TOUCH to get operators used to the system before they transition to the command centre .”
What about FLANDERS ARDVARC and single pass versus multi pass drilling ? Iacopetta says : “ Single pass is much simpler in that you are using one drill steel . Multipass is more complex due to the hole depths . In coal overburden for example you are typically drilling 45-60 m . Most of the older drills that we retrofit have a deck fork arrangement so the deck fork lines up the flats . A manual operator can see the flats and operate the fork but with an autonomous system
you rely on the system slowing down to line up the forks . Newer generation drills have deck clamps which makes multipass autonomy much easier to implement . But of course its not just about adding steels – the multipass algorithms are more complex as well – ensuring head limits are at the right level for example is crucial .”
Then there is the question of diesel drills versus tethered cable electric , which is obviously an increasing focus due to emissions reduction targets . “ We have developed cable management for ARDVARC in recent years , which was initially driven from 2018 by our retrofitting some electric drills in Canada for autonomy and subsequently other units in South America . With cable management the focus is on path planning .”
Next , are the drill OEMs not putting barriers in place in interoperability terms of make third party drill autonomy more challenging to implement ? “ This has never affected us as we remove the OEM PLC and I / O modules and replace them with our own proprietary system . This is a major reason why we have been able to automate any drill and any brand , all operated from one command centre . This has allowed us to bring autonomy to customers with diverse mixed drill fleets and is still what makes us unique in the market ”.
With mixed drill fleets is there not performance variation between different OEMs and does this not complicate autonomy ? “ That is true but there is also variation between different drill models and drill ages of the same OEM . We allow for this in our PLC algorithm . Even for drills of the same model , one that has more operating hours will have more wear and tear such as in the pumps or the seals or the cylinders , we take account of that with some fine tuning and adjustments which is another differentiator for us .”
Another selling point for FLANDERS is giving customers full data access . “ OEMs tend to lock out certain data points from their autonomy control systems or effectively charge customers for data access such as detailed analytics or reporting . With us the data belongs to the customer and they have access to the raw data SQL database so their own teams can work with it . The only things we keep to ourselves in ARDVARC are the drill control PLC algorithms as that is our IP .” FLANDERS does also supply daily reports on a time usage model based on what the customers wants to see .
Going forward , another industry trend is the automation of not just large blasthole drills but also smaller boom type crawler drills . “ We are also involved in this but I think it is important to mention that a lot of this work is around semi autonomy and remote control solutions as these drill types are not always on a flat bench and perform a more diverse range of drilling tasks , such as pre-splits . We are working with a
22 International Mining | APRIL 2023