DRILLING ENGINEERING
It is not a blast, but this boring machine can change mining
In a dusty brick quarry north of Rome stands a machine so futuristic it looks as if it should be in a Ridley Scott film. The articulated machine is the first of its kind, a mobile tunnel-boring machine designed and developed by JSE-listed Master Drilling and its Italian contractor Seli Technologies. Able to bore tunnels 4.5m-5.5m in diameter, the machine is unique because it can be lowered into the depths of a mine and assembled from its four component parts. It takes a crew of just three to operate it, and Master Drilling aims to remove one by automating the tunnel-support function. It has a 30m turning radius, a fraction of the more than 100m or more of other borers, and it operates on a 12º incline or decline, ideal to sink decline shafts or spiral ramps. The prototype machine, which Master Drilling hopes to deploy to its first client, has yet to turn its massive cutting head, with last-minute tweaks delaying the start of a technology that could radically change the way mining co...
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