Australian mining-tech company IMDEX has announced a major milestone for BlastDog, its breakthrough drill and blast technology. It is moving from engineering development to commercial prototype by the end of the year.
BlastDog is a semi-autonomously deployed system for logging material properties and blast hole characteristics at high spatial density across the bench and mine and is commodity agnostic.
It has been developed in collaboration with Universal Field Robots and tested at mines in Queensland, Western Australia, Chile, and Nevada.
IMDEX says there is already strong industry interest in BlastDog because of its capacity to deliver reliable, real-time data that will enable critical mine planning decisions to be made earlier, introducing greater efficiencies throughout the mining value chain.
IMDEX CEO Paul House said no other technology had the capacity to produce the same data and provide as large an impact on downstream processes, including enhancing productivity.
“It has the capacity to improve productivity, efficiency, and safety and is part of IMDEX’s internet of geo-sensing initiative and will significantly increase mine to mill efficiency,” House said.
Among the benefits, IMDEX says BlastDog will:
- Improve fragmentation;
- Improve material and grade control;
- Reduce geotechnical risk;
- Reduce adverse vibrations;
- Define ore boundaries and prevent ore waste;
- Indicate reactive ground; and
- Reduce fume, flyrock, and vibration.
Learn more at www.ImdexLimited.com.
