Learning Centre – Diamec MCR
G’Day, I’m Jared – CEO of Webdrill, the underground diamond drilling specialists.
Today, we’re going to be discussing our Diamec MCR.
Let’s get right to it!
For this video we need to go back to the beginning and explain the story to you, where it all began and where it is now.
The original MCR rig came with a 75kw electric powered unit and a different configuration of motors, pumps and optional extras.
The Webdrill Specification MCR has 28 modifications made to it compared to the original standard product from Epiroc. I will quickly touch on a few points worth noting.
We took it upon ourselves to upgrade the standard rig to a 112kw rig, which is a 90kw and 22kw electric motors running different hydraulic circuits.
The rig also has a flight pump receptacle, so you can run a 20kw flight pump at the decline face if you find yourself drilling there.
We have 100m of trailing cable, which is the power cable off the back of the rig, which runs to the jumbo box. So anywhere a standard twin boom boring jumbo can operate in the mine, a Webdrill jumbo is able to plug into any jumbo box and operate in most areas of the mine. Which makes drill sites easier to design and generally less rework for service crews and sparkies.
The rig is water-cooled with heat exchangers and the rig has the Rig Control System 4 program that runs through it. All our rigs in the fleet are RCS4.
The feed frame has a BQ to HQ size rotation head so we can drill from BQ, NQ and HQ with all the same components. We don’t have to change any major components on the rig. We just simply change out the Chuck Jaws which is what grabs the rods and drill. This is great for us when drilling Nickel as you find yourself working between HQ and NQ often.
The boom has a new style turning device and roll over so the angles you can drill back on yourself towards the carrier is well past 180 degrees from other previous designs.
The rig is also very narrow at 2.6m wide, one of the smallest in the industry. And this allows us to get into the smaller drives that are typically 3.8m to 4.5m wide, which is typical to narrow vein, high grade gold mining. So, we can actively work in these areas quite effectively, everything we need is on the rig, such as the water pump, VHF radio for comms and control panel we leave on the carrier as its open cab.
The rig has a very low centre of gravity. The driller or the driver sits in a high position and has great visibility both forward and backward. With our designed drill rigs, all the weight sits down low and we like keeping that centre of gravity low. So, it’s a very nice rig to tram underground and very stable.
All rigs come with last run unattended drilling. We setup the laser barrier system at the access, so when we leave the drill site at the end of shift or mid shift firing, the last run unattended drilling or what we call auto drill is left drilling. The rig has a beacon flashing on it that tells anyone who comes to the drill site if we are not there, that the rig is in auto drill. And if anyone does proceed through our chains and breaks our laser beams, then the rig goes into its shutdown process.
The shutdown process is fully programable and the rig will slow the rods down before turning the rig off.
The Balance and Ramp times can be set depending on depth of each hole. What’s this you ask?
Balance, how long the rig keeps the bit cutting at the end of the stroke before the rig stops rotation and chucks back. The importance of this is every rock has a different hardness or MPA. This is programable is seconds.
Ramp time, is how long the rotation keeps running oil to the rotation motor before the rods slow down before stopping to chuck back. This is programable is seconds also.
The last point to note is the time and speed at which you can have the hole flush done, once the 3m run has been drilled when you are not there. This is all fully programable at the control panel.
In my opinion that’s the best Automation Package that I have worked on ever. We have spent years learning its benefits and we take advantage of it when we can.
Well that’s a quick snapshot of the MCR, there is plenty more positive things I can say about our rigs and why they are so liked by the drillers coming to join us. Once converted, they all say they will never go back to pilot hydraulic.
So that’s our Diamec MCR and its benefits, we hope you have found that helpful. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any more questions.
That’s a wrap!
