MINING

BLAST HOLE DRILL AUTOMATION

Drilling. No matter what kind of mining you are involved with, the entire process starts here. The Flanders Electric ARDVARC™ (Advanced Rotary Drill Vector Automated Radio Control) drill automation system can help you improve productivity and machine life cycle management.

The ARDVARC™ drill automation system does more than just automate your machine. With 3 ARDVARC systems, you can choose what level of drill automation is right for your operation. The ARDVARC One-Touch Drill system, our most popular option, converts your manual machine to a "one-touch" drilling machine. The machine operator needs only to put the machine over the desired target and press a button on the 15" daylight readable touch screen to initiate the drilling process. The drill automation system will then level the machine, collar the hole and drill to the desired depth then, retract the bit and reset the jacks in preparation of the next propel cycle.

For ARDVARC™ users who desire a complete data collection system without the automation of the machine, the ARDVARC Blast Plan is right for you. Data is collected in a Microsoft SQL database and is stored perpetually on the machine ensuring that no data is lost. The data from the drill data collection system is stored in 3 production tables and 3 event log tables and is easily accessed using any standard data reporting tool. Production data is broken down into shift totals, single hole production records, and a foot by foot record of the entire drilled hole. Event data is stored in a fault and alarm table, a machine status table and a detailed machine status table so you not only know what is happening with your drill fleet but why.

For the mine operator who truly wants drill automation, ARDVARC Auto Propel is the only solution on the market today. With more than 1 million holes drilled without human interaction, ARDVARC is the only automation system that can claim true autonomy when it comes to the drilling process. With ARDVARC Auto Propel, the machine accurately and precisely positions itself on the design blast hole without human interaction and begins to drill the hole. It can monitor the surrounding area for obstacles using the Flanders Electric HazCam 3D imaging system to ensure safe operation of the machine. Incredible productivity gains, as much as 30%, can be realized by reducing machine down time due to blasting and shift changes. The ARDVARC Auto Propel System is drilling tomorrows holes today.

All three ARDVARC systems utilize high precision GPS to accurately and consistently position your machine over the designed blast hole locations. Flanders Electric offers an excellent high precision GPS solution for those mine sites who either do not currently have high precision GPS or who would like to upgrade their existing GPS systems with newer technology. As the mine operator, you can use any GPS positioning technology currently on the market today, you are not required to purchase it from Flanders Electric. ARDVARC uses the HP GPS systems to display the position of the machine relative to design hole coordinates on a 2D map, which is uploaded via wireless network. ARDVARC's simple web based pattern loading interface is intuitive and can be used on multiple client PC's at the same time.

ARDVARC™ drill automation is available for nearly every model of rotary drill on the market today. This feature enables the mine operator with a mixed fleet of drills to standardize the control system making operator training as well as maintenance training much easier to manage.