SURFACE DRILLING now everything has come together on this one platform. And that includes the entire Pit Viper range, not just one model.
Blignaut:“ We have a lot of autonomous platform drills out there. In fact, we now have a fully automated platform rig running in every continent in the globe, except Antarctica. The majority of these were deployed on our previously available TeleREMOTE OPS platform. One of our ambitions with CAP is to allow these Pit Viper customers to transition from TeleREMOTE to CAP and once they have done this, if they have SmartROC D65 drill rigs that they want to bring into the autonomous control room as well, they can do that. Technically, if you have CAP you need no additional hardware in the control room to add the D65s.”
To what extent has CAP actually been rolled out and deployed in the market?“ We already have a lot of orders in place for customers wanting to use it with SmartROC rigs and in addition we have a few CAP customers already using it with SmartROC surface drill rigs in South America, Australia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. Plus with the release of its availability for the Pit Viper we are expecting a demand ramp up in the coming months related to that – some of this will be sites already using CAP for SmartROCs but also for mines primarily wanting it for their Pit Viper fleet.”
Blignaut said a big driver for that is that TeleREMOTE due to server rack space and computing power can only support up to 10 drills being autonomously controlled – CAP can support up to 22 drills. He adds that this is timed well as there are some sites now looking to move beyond 10 fully autonomous drills on one system. This is a big market change reflecting the greater confidence in automation – the average per site used to be three or four. Several customers want to take the total to the maximum 22, and for that CAP will be used.
Back to the wider automation topic – what is the latest on Epiroc automation of tethered cable electric rigs? This has lagged behind diesel rigs mainly due to the added complexity of dealing with the cable, and the historically lower global population of electric machines.“ Our single row autonomous electric drills are already running quite effectively today, with their operation achieving up to 95 % autonomous utilisation if you manage the cable well. The demand for electric cable drills is rapidly increasing – but a lot of this is related to future requirements – mines are factoring in their drills being electric in the medium term rather than long term, and Epiroc already has electric drills available across most of its portfolio. We are being very careful about how we are developing our autonomous cable management system as from our perspective, an electric cable management
Going battery with the SmartROC D65 BE
At MINExpo 2024 last September, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore met with Epiroc Global Product Line Manager Robin Edsborn to discuss the battery electric SmartROC D65 BE crawler drill that was there at the show, enroute to Capital Drilling Ltd in Egypt for commencement of testing and trials at the Sukari gold mine, now part of AngloGold Ashanti. The DTH SmartROC D65 BE primarily uses the battery for tramming, while being plugged into a cable during actual drilling work. But what are the challenges of scaling up a battery electric drill rig to this much larger size class?“ The big challenge is getting the power needed to the rig at this larger scale and the fact that in mines where the SmartROC D65 is used, tramming distances, such as to a new bench, tend to be longer than in a quarrying application. When we are running a DTH electric rig versus a top hammer electric rig, there is a much higher energy need. We have been able to use the same overall system design as the SmartROC T35 E demonstrator rig we showed at Bauma 2022 but of course have had to scale up the components.”
The SmartROC D65 BE air compressor and hydraulics are powered by electricity instead of a diesel engine. There is one electric motor for the compressor and one for the hydraulics – this means now you can shut off the compressor completely during tramming so this is an efficiency advantage versus a diesel rig. The electric rig is currently a higher CAPEX but has a lower TCO due to lower required maintenance over the rig life plus in most locations electric power is lower than diesel cost as well.
The SmartROC D65 BE has double the amount of battery power of the SmartROC T35 E demonstrator just to be able to have reasonable tramming time on the batteries; but still of course is still drilling on cable. The
system has to be closely integrated into the mine infrastructure and potentially be interoperable with more than just the drills – such as equipment on the bench and other machines, even charging systems – because all of these mines that want to go electric don’ t just want electric drills. So we have a couple of projects where we are looking at autonomous electric drills being part of an overall electric mine ecosystem that we are developing in tandem with the expected demand timeline.”
Epiroc has already incorporated battery technology on its smaller crawler drill, the SmartROC D65, which is on trial with Capital Drilling. On the current demonstrator version,
Epiroc ' s Global Product Line Manager Robin Edsborn with the SmartROC D65 BE at MINExpo 2024
primary reason for doing battery tramming is to allow the drill to move off the bench for blasting then come back into the drill pattern and continue drilling. It also avoids having to deal with the cable during moves – easily moving the drill around on bench as well as up to the service area in the mine when needed. So its all about flexibility when not plugged in.
What has driven the demand for the SmartROC D65 BE type of solution?“ The customers are looking at electric drills primarily to get carbon emissions down as the flexibiity offered is similar to that from a diesel rig of the same class. There is a lot of interest from the mining sector but at the same time there is caution as it is still a new concept for them when it comes to this type of drill rig versus large rotaries where cable electric operation is already quite common.” The charging approach for the battery packs depends on the customer and what kind of
infrastructure they have on site. It can be connected directly to the grid if there is a grid connection; or it can be connected to containerised battery energy storage systems.
Edsborn said the testing this year which has already commenced will be intensive and will be followed by whatever tweaks or updates are needed before full commercialisation.
which is cable powered, the primary function of the battery is for tramming not the drilling itself, with the battery packs being recharged while drilling. This means the cable does not have to be used for tramming for now, with the intent to eventually remove the cable altogether.
Finally – ASI Mining is now fully part of Epiroc and its Mobius automation platform renamed to LinkOA – while it has been deployed for autonomous haulage at Roy Hill this also includes the ability to automate drill fleets via LinkOA for Drills( formerly Mobius for Drills), which enables autonomous drilling by integrating the drill fleet into a cohesive commad and control system. Focused on improving safety and
APRIL 2025 | International Mining