MINING TECHNOLOGY
Master Drilling unveils powerful new borer
Master Drilling, an innovative mining services company, will begin trial work on a mobile boring machine that could revolutionise the way horizontal tunnels are dug in mines, accessing ore bodies more quickly and safely and bringing marginal deposits into play. The tracked, modular machine can bore 5.5m-to 8m-wide holes into hard rock, with the expectation that it will be three or four times faster than traditional drilling and blasting methods, able to work around the clock with a crew of just three people per shift as it advances up to 6m per day. Using traditional drilling and blasting methods, the advance was 40m to 60m a month. Master Drilling has a history of unveiling new technologies or concepts at the annual African Mining Indaba in Cape Town and 2018 was no different, with a throng of delegates gathered around a model of the machine and an animated video of how it will work when it is tested in a South African diamond mine in the fourth quarter of 2018. As vertical tunnels...
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