A 360° blast-hole drill???

[shovelman]

I know we have some mining people on here; and hopefully some that specialize in drilling and blasting. I have a question for you.

What would be the advantage of having a 30-50 ton blasthole drill literally built on a hydraulic excavator undercarriage that revolves? I don't get it!

Can someone tell me how this works as an advantage in any way?

Images are from the Furukawa website.

'All the best,

John

 

[Chris5500]

I'm no drill specialist but I'm guessing it’s for easier, more accurate manoeuvrability and positioning, as well as less damage to the drill pattern. For example, rather than shunting back and forth and screwing the tracks to turn and get into position you can jack the machine up, slew the carbody to the direction you want to travel then raise the jacks and continue to track forward.

 

[Mass-X]

There are two advantages (that I know of) that rotary blasthole drills have over standard rigid frame blasthole drills.

On narrow benches, a rotary blasthole drill can track parallel to the highwall and rotate laterally to reach numerous drillhole locations in the pattern without having to spin tracks and crawl all over a narrow bench to drill the pattern.

As more mines move to GPS guided blasthole drills to take advantage of the benefits they provide, a blasthole drill that rotates offers easier exacting placement of the drill steel. Getting the steel perfectly centered can be difficult on large drills when rotating two tracks causes lurching back and forth and often advancing past the drillhole center, requiring the operator to back up, and advance forward again attempting to line up; this decreases production, is hard on undercarriages and tears up the graded drill pattern pad. Hydraulic swing motors make fine lateral movements very easy. This precise placement is especially important for pre-splitting and cast blasting; notice the three posted pictures all show angle-drilling operations.

 

[MKTEF]

On a bench you place your holes parallell to the edge.
With the tracks 90 degres to the edge u just travel from side to side.
And u get a bigger workarea, with the revolving structure.
And as Mass-X says, it would be tremendous stress on the carriage when fine tuning the whole plasement with a rig that size.
One of the positive things with Sandvik riggs.(they got it on smaler rigs too)

Thats what you see on the pictures.(edge is straight in front of the cab)
Angle drilling is always positive for your blasting, angled holes demand less explosives and reduses the shockwaves after the blast.
With straigt holes, there is always a posibility that you wount get the rock to come out at the lowest point of the face.(where the tention in the rock is biggest)