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From gunpowder to Pit Viper


Drilling and blasting
Therotaryblastholedrillingrig wasalongtimecoming.GunpowderwasinventedinChina about1000A.D.ButinEuropeat leastittookanother500yearsor morebeforeminersstartedtouse itforblastingandafurtherthree centuriesfortheintroductionof mechanizeddrillinginsurface mines.Mobileblastholedrilling rigshavebeeninuseforonly somesixtyyears.

gunpowder
The application of blasting agents apparently began in Hungarian mines sometime during the sixteenth century. To make better use of the explosive force, miners started to place the powder in holes and it is certain that drilling and blasting were used in several German and Scandinavian mines early in the seventeenth century, for instance at the Nasafjll silver mine in Lappland in 1635, and in 1644 at the Rros mine in Norway. One-man drilling with the help of a drill steel and sledgehammer was the established technology used in the

The Pit Viper is designed for production drilling of large holes in hard rock conditions.

Drilling with sledgehammer was the established method before the development of the rock drill.

eighteenth century. This physically demanding technique evolved only slowly but, despite the mechanization of other industries, remained in quite widespread use until well into the twentieth century. However, powered drills did start to mount a challenge in the 1800s, the competition in the USA being symbolized by John Henry who in 1870 hammered through 14 feet in 35 minutes while the steam drill only completed nine feet. The first patented rock drilling machine was a steam driven percussion drill invented by J. J. Couch in Philadelphia in 1849 but it may have been preceded by a machine manufactured by the Scottish engineer James Nasmyth ten years earlier. This patent spurred a period of rapid development, accelerated in the 1860s by Nobels inventions of the blasting cap and safe dynamite explosives. From 1850 to 1875 some

110 rock drill patents were granted to American inventors and seven for drill carriers while 86 patents were issued in Europe during this period. In 1851 James Fowle, who had worked with Couch, patented a rock drill that could be powered by steam or compressed air and could rotate the drill steel by means of a ratchet wheel controlled by the piston's back-andforth movement. In the 1860s large scale rock drilling machines were built for tunnelling by engineers in Europe and the United States. One of the most successful of these early rock drills was the second refined version of the Burleigh rock drill, which was put into service in October 1866 at the Hoosac tunnel in Massachusetts. The performance at this tunnel project showed that rock drill development had taken the step from an experimental product to a proven and rather reliable technology.
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In 1871, a number of patents were issued to the inventor Simon Ingersoll, who started the Ingersoll Rock Drill Company The machine produced by Ingersoll was at this time regarded as the best rock drill yet produced, and it was followed in the mid 1880s by another success, the famous Ingersoll Eclipse machine.

The Ingersoll rockdrill was a simple and strong design with few moving parts.

In 1871 the American inventor Simon Ingersoll patented a steam powered rock drill, later to be operated on compressed air. Ingersoll formed the Ingersoll Rock Drill Company in the same year, during the following year purchased the FowleBurleigh patents and also merged with the Burleigh company. The new compact rock drill launched by Ingersoll was a simple and strong design with few moving parts. The designers had kept in view the tough conditions in which the rock drill had to work, and the contemporary technical opinion regarded his new rock drill as the best yet available on the market. During the years to come Ingersoll bought out many small firms and expanded his company. The Ingersoll Rand name came into use in 1905 through the combination of Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company and Rand Drill Company. The AB Atlas enterprise had been founded in February 1873 at a time when the Swedish railway net was being rapidly expanded. Three years later, now with 700 employees and the Stockholm shops completed, AB Atlas had delivered more than 600 railway wagons. Diminishing demand from the railroad sector, combined with years of losses, led to a reconstruction in 1890. During the years to follow new product lines were added, including compressed
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air tools, compressors, diesel engines and the first Atlas rock drill which was launched in 1905.

Further development
The design of the first Atlas rock drill featured an advanced rifle bar rotation but with a weight of 280 kg (617 lb) it was very heavy for manual use. Immediately and for the next 25 years Atlas focused on light weight hand rotated drills like the Cyclop, Rex, and Bob. The real Atlas winner among lightweight hand-held rock drills was the RH-65 from the year 1932. This machine had more efficient shank and chuck designs for better steel guidance

and longer shank life. Used with the new pusher leg feed system developed in the 1930s, the RH 65 was the most important element in what was later to become known as the "Swedish method" of underground drilling. In the United States Ingersoll-Rand expanded into pneumatic tools in 1907 by acquiring the Imperial Pneumatic Tool Company of Athens, Pennsylvania. In 1909 the company bought the A.S. Cameron Steam Pump Works and entered the industrial pump business. Ingersoll Rand also acquired the J. George Leyner Engineering Works Com-pany. This firm had developed a small, pneumatic hammer that could be operated by one man. This Jackhamer

The first drill made by Atlas "pneumatic rock drill No. 16" had a weight of 280 kg (617 lb) and was heavy and difficult to handle - at least two men were needed to move it.

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introduced in 1912 became a popular item, and the company progressively developed the design as well as supplying compressors to the expanding construction and mining industries in North and South America

Rock drilling tools


The parallel improvement of drill steel quality had started during the 1890s with development of heat treated drill steel that could better resist deformation. But sharpening the tips required extensive haulage of tons of drill steel between drilling sites and the work shops. The detachable drill bit was developed in 1918 by A L Hawkesworth, a foreman at the Anaconda copper mine in Butte, Montana. The first versions used a dovetail joint to the drill steel while later versions were threaded or tapered. The rods were retained at the workings and used with new or re-forged bits. In Europe during the German collapse in 1918 a team was formed at the Osram lamp factory to develop cemented tungsten carbide as a substitute for industrial diamonds. In 1926 the first cemented tungsten carbide became available as a magical machine tool for turning and milling operations. Early tests were made in 1928 trying to use tungsten carbide bits for rock drilling in German mines and before World War II promising results were obtained. By this time the research team had scattered and some members had been forced to leave the country. One of these, Hans Herman Wolff, found refuge in Sweden where he worked at the Luma lamp factory. Dr Wolff manufactured a number of bits according to designs provided by Erik Ryd at Atlas. The bits were tested in the Atlas test mine. In 1942 Atlas, Sandvik and Fagersta signed a cooperative agreement and it was not until 1945, after a long improvement process, that the new cemented tungsten carbide drill bits were as economical to use as conventional steel bits. The post-war years saw Atlas achieve further major advances. In 1948 the company introduced an RH 65 upgrade, the RH 656, which was designed to use the new cemented carbide tipped drillsteels.The superior performance of the Light Swedish Method was exploited
Blasthole Drilling in open pit Mining

The US patent for a dual roller cone bit was issued to Howard Hughes Sr. in 1909.

worldwide and culminated in 1962 with the completion of the Mont Blanc tunnel. With development of highly mechanized drill rigs and with the introduction in 1973 of the COP 1038 hydraulic top hammer drill Atlas Copco laid the foundation to become a world leader in top hammer drilling technology. (See article from wagon drill to SmartRig, Surface drilling, Fourth Edition 2008).

rollers equipped with steel teeth. Drilling was accomplished by transferring a pulldown force to drive the teeth into the hole bottom. The three roller cones turned as the drill string was rotated, and the teeth crushed and spalled the rock. While tophammer drills could be used for small blast holes in rock, this method was not suitable for large hole diameters; for these rotary drills were

Rotary bits
Rotary drilling with drag bits was the common method used in oil drilling. These bits were suitable when drilling in soft formations like sand or clay but not in rock. The solution for drilling large diameter holes in rock was by using rotary crushing technology instead of trying to cut hard rock with drag bits. The roller cone bit was developed by Hughes and Sharp, and the US patent for a dual roller cone bit was issued to Howard Hughes Sr. in 1909. This new type of bit had two interlocking wheels with steel teeth, and penetrated the rock by crushing and chipping. The success of the new bit led to the founding of the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, and after Sharp's death in 1912 the name was changed to Hughes Tool Company. The company continued development of the roller cone bit and in 1933 two Hughes engineers invented the tricone bit. This bit had three conical

The Secoroc Tricone bits are now regarded as the ultimate blasthole bit solution.

the best alternative. However, as drillers sought to use the rotary system for progressively harder rock formations so the feed force (pulldown) available had to be increased. Roller cones with long steel teeth were used in softer formations for gouging the formation while roller cones with shorter teeth were used for crushing and spalling harder formations.
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Secoroc downhole hammer (DHD), also named Down The Hole hammer (DTH)

A parallel development of the tricone bits made it possible to use these high loads on bits. To extend the life of the bits in hard and abrasive rock the steel teeth were replaced by cemented tungsten carbide inserts. Tungsten carbide inserts have significantly increased the number of blast holes that the roller cone bits are able to drill. Improvements in materials have continued to increase the life of the bearings so the cutting structures can be fully utilized. While the geometry of the roller cone bit is much the same as the original bit patented in 1933, the material and technology currently utilized is cutting edge.

Downhole drilling technology


Meanwhile, manual lightweight pneumatic drills had also underpinned the expansion of bench mining in open cut mines and quarries. But in the 1930s downhole drills (DHDs ) were introduced for drilling deeper holes. The main initial development of this technology took place in Belgium and the United States. Atlas designed a downhole unit in the mid-thirties that was used with

good results in two Swedish limestone quarries until the 1950s but the company then ceased further DHD development, only re-entering the market in 1969 with the COP 4 and COP 6 down-the-hole hammers. In 1955 Ingersoll-Rand introduced a new downhole drill design and started to establish downhole drilling on a truly commercial basis. The Tandematic, which at the time was claimed to provide the highest drilling speed ever attained by a downhole drill, was supplied in two standard sizes the DHD 275 for 4* inch and 5 inch holes and the DHD 1060 for 6 and 6 inch . This later enabled the company to build drill rigs adapted to be used either for rotary drilling or with downhole hammers. The main difference is that downhole drilling requires more air, and consequently these drill rigs had to be equipped with a larger capacity compressor and a more powerful diesel or electric engine. Downhole drill technology went through rapid change in 1960s and 70s. In fairly rapid succession I-R developed the DHD 325 ( their first 6" hammer), DHD 325A, DHD 16, DHD 1060, DHD 1060 A and B models, DHD 360 (all 6"

drills) and corresponding larger and smaller models, up to the current line of DHDs. Probably the most significant change in DHD technology was the advent of the valveless DHD. Drill efficiency and life dramatically improved with the elimination of the flapper valve. Of course higher pressure and volume air from the air compressor advancements produced the performance one sees today. Re-entry to the downhole drill market at 6 bar** in 1969 also enabled Atlas Copco to take advantage of improved air compressors and develop more and more powerful downhole hammers, reaching 18 bar in the early 1980s and more recently 25 bar and 30 bar in the larger current hammer sizes.

Drill rigs
The mobilization of rotary and downhole drills was linked to significant post-war changes in rotary drilling technology. Up until then rotary drilling had been used in water well drilling and surface mining using fluid circulation to clean cuttings from the hole. Coal mines were using rotary drilling in soft overburden, removing the cuttings with augers. In the late 1940s it was realized that air was an effective flushing medium with considerable advantages over water, doing a better cleaning job, protecting the bits and eliminating the difficulties of supplying water. Experience also proved that air flushing improved the penetration rate of rolling cutter bits such as tricone bits and extended their life. By using efficient air flushing to keep the bottom of the drill hole free from cuttings the rock breaking process became more efficient. In 1948, Ingersoll-Rand entered the large-diameter blast hole market by launching the Quarrymaster. It really was not a rotary drill, but a large self
Blasthole Drilling in open pit Mining

* 1 inch = 25.4 mm, ** 1 bar = 14.5 psi, *** 1 lb = 0.45 kg

The Quarrymaster from 1948 was equipped with a huge 8" bore drifter.

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Rotary table and Kelly bar concept.

propelled mounting in the 40,000 lb weight range, designed with on board air and a long drill tower to drill 6 inch to 8 inch diameter holes for mining and quarry applications. The original Quarrymasters were equipped with a huge 8" bore drifter, know as the QD8. This was a piston drill with the drill steel attached directly to the drifter piston. The blow frequency was in the range of 200-300 blows per minute. The drifter used a large rifle bar rotation system. Achieving decent wear life between the rifle bar and rifle nut was sometimes a problem in tight ground. This was a single pass drill system, hole depth was limited by the tower length. The steel system was a heavy wall tubular product, in the range of 4" OD, and was extremely heavy. Since there was no steel change, the weight didnt seem to be much of an issue. Quarrymasters were used in some large iron mines in Canada and the Atlantic City Iron Ore Mine in Wyoming. Numerous Quarrymasters were used in the rock excavation for the St Lawrence Seaway in Canada. In the same year also Atlas introduced its first mobile rubber tired drill wagons for top hammer drilling, but these were not equipped with any tramming machinery and were intended for considerably smaller hole diameters. I-R development work with downhole drills in the early 1950s brought about changes to the drill mounting business. First, the Quarrymaster was equipped with the newly developed QRD rotary head, and this along with the new DHD 325 down hole drill, made for a productive but heavy and bulky package. The Drillmaster design, a somewhat smaller rotary drill, was introduced about 1955. It produced the same performBlasthole Drilling in open pit Mining

Big picture; Airpowered DM-3 with a DRD-2 Rotary head from the late 1950's. Inset; Tractor mounted Drillmaster, air powered with a DRD Rotary Head from the early 1950's.

ance as the Quarrymaster in a smaller and less costly package. Upgraded versions of the Drillmaster, the DM-1, DM-2 and DM-3 followed in quick succession. Originally equipped with sliding vane air compressors up to 900 cfm*, all were updated to the screw compressor design. The Drillmaster line was equipped with the DRD and later DRD 2 rotary head to provide drill string rotation. As with the QRD rotary head the DRD was powered by a vane air motor and several steps of gear reduction. All of these drills only used hydraulic power, from an engine driven hydraulic pump off the cam shaft, to operate the jacks, tower raising cylinders, break-out wrench, and dust collector drive motor. Neither rotary head was very useful in supplying straight rotary power for tricone bits, hence the future development of the T-4 and DM-4 with hydraulic powered rotary head for straight rotary drilling. I-Rs first truck drill was called the Trucm package. The drill frame package was mounted on a customer provided truck, often a used Mack truck. However, none of the standard truck designs proved very successful. The normal channel truck frames were not sturdy enough, resulting in many cracked and broken truck

frames. I-Rs answer to this problem was to join hands with Crane Carrier Corp of Tulsa, OK, and mount the drill components and tower directly on an I-beam chassis frame, often used for mounting construction cranes. This product became the TRUCM-3 and the same style mounting carried over to the T-4 and T4W introduced in 1968. A major new stimulus for blasthole drilling rig development generally was the introduction in the 1950s of millisecond delay blasting. This allowed
* 100 cfm = 47.2 l/s

The truck mounted T4BH was introduced in 1968.

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* 1 ft = 0.304 m ** 1,000 lbf = 4.44 kN = 453 kilogram-force

The DM50 could use bit loads up to 50,000 lbf and was launched in 1970.

blasters to design multi-hole large volume blasts that could be used for mass production techniques in open cut drill and blast mines. In turn this required the introduction of large, mobile drilling rigs able to drill large diameter holes using tricone bits, as well as the formulation of cheap bulk mining explosives based on ammonium nitrate and nitro-glycerine. These and other developments helped the mining industry to keep the costs of bench drilling substantially unchanged during the 1950s and 1960s, despite increasing wage costs. The Quarrymaster and TRUCM machines were made progressively more self-contained through the 1950s. By the end of the decade the air supply was up to 10 bar and the marketing slogan Pressure is Productivity was promoted. The drill rigs and rock drills were sold together to maximize revenue but this did encourage other manufacturers to build competing rock drills.

hydraulics technology adds to drillers options


The similarities between the air requirements of rotary and downhole drilling
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made the design of rigs able to do both an economically attractive proposition. In 1965-66 Ingersoll-Rand started work on the switch to hydraulic powered rotation for rotary and downhole drilling, launching first the truck-mounted T4W for water well drilling in 1968. In the same year this rig was modified to make a truck-mounted blasthole rig with a 5-rod carousel, the Drillmaster T4BH, which could drill holes of up to 7 inch diameter and was successfully offered for coal mine drilling throughout the 1970s. The designers also used the power unit, tower and other components to create the crawler-mounted Drillmaster DM4 blasthole drilling rig. This machine was designed from the ground up for both rotary and downhole drilling. A 36 ft* high tower incorporated a hydraulically indexed carousel housing seven 25 ft rods. The rotary head featured an axial piston hydraulic motor and single-reduction worm gear for rotation, providing 5.6 kNm of torque and rotation speeds from 0 100 rpm. There was a choice of diesel engine or electric motor for the spring mounted f loating power pack and a range of diesel or electric compressors, enabling use of either rotary or downhole drilling with the companys DHD-15, -16 or -17 downhole drills. The excavator style crawler undercarriage had tracks with 22 inch triple bar grousers driven by hydraulic motor through a planetary gear drive and chain reduction. In the marketplace the DM4 competed with the more powerful electric top drive blasthole drilling rigs. The late 1960s and 1970s saw heavy takeup of the DM4 rig by the Appalachian coal mines in the United States. And the combination of patented rig, drill and drill rod technology was very profitable for Ingersoll-Rand. The use of hydraulic power for rotation and non-drilling functions meant that more air could be made available for rotary and, especially, for downhole drilling. This engendered an air race in the late 1960s and 1970s. The independent downhole drill manufacturers were able to build machines that could drill at 130 ft/hour in the 6 8 inch diameter hole range faster than a rotary drill could achieve in this hole size range,

particularly when drilling in harder rock types. The development of screw compressors to supply air for drilling rigs at up to 20.6 bar led to the 1970s introduction of an airend to supply both low pressure and high pressure air. These units were used in portable air compressors and also onboard drilling rigs, where they enabled downhole drills to outperform rotary drills in the 6 - 8 inch hole sizes in hard rock mines. However, rotary drills were still better for rock compressive strengths up to medium hard limestone. The higher pressures were also very beneficial for water well drilling, in which air pressure must be sufficient to evacuate the ground water pressure from the hole while drilling.

expansion of the Drillmaster range


Significant corporate developments and one major product launch impacted the Ingersoll-Rand drilling business in the mid-1970s. Firstly, in 1973 the company acquired DAMCO (Drill And Manufacturing Company) in Dallas, Texas, who built mechanically driven pre-split drilling machines for quarrying and light coal stripping. These expanded the Drillmaster range down to the 20,000 lbf* bit weight class. The rigs also used the rotary table drive and kelly bar concept, which lightened the tower structure sufficiently to accommodate rod long enough to drill 40 50ft holes in a single pass if required. IngersollRand added their own compressors to create the DM20, DM25, DM25-SP (single-pass), DM35 and DM35-SP rotary rig models. Then, in 1975, the company bought the Sanderson Cyclone Drill Company in Ohio, USA, adding 12 models designed for the water well market. The next extension of the size class range came with the launch of the Drillmaster DM50 with 50,000 lbf of weight on the bit. In this machine the diesel engine drove the hydraulic power pack from one end of the crankshaft and the compressor was directly coupled to the other. This concept was also used on the next two drills to be launched. The first one was a new crawler mounted
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rig for rotary or downhole drilling, the DM45 with 45,000lbf weight on bit. This was followed by a conceptually similar top drive rotary or DHD model, the DM30 and a specialized rotary table variant, the DM-35I, which was introduced in the 1980s for drilling underwater in phosphate mines. It featured a dual kelly system that allowed explosives to be charged through the annulus between the outer and inner kelly. The inner kelly would then be removed for blasting. Later the DM 40SPi was developed for drilling and shooting deeper holes.

Development of large blasthole drills


Towards the end of the seventies, the company started designing drill rigs more specifically aimed at the base metal mining market, using power pack concepts developed for deephole drilling. So far, neither air-powered nor hydraulic drive rotary nor downhole drills had challenged the electric motor top drive rotary rigs manufactured in the United States for the 12 15 inch diameter hole market. These machines by now had very high weights on bit in the range 100,000 120,000 lbf, partly due to the weight of the electric motor for the rotary head, but were not suitable for live tower operation. Ingersoll-Rands first response was in 1979 with the development of the Drillmaster DM70, able to drill 10 inch diameter holes in metal mines and up to 12 inch holes at coal mines using 8.6 bar air for rotary drilling. And in 1979 the company launched the DM-H (Drillmaster Heavy), the first truly modern large blasthole drilling rig to be used for low pressure rotary drilling of 9 7/8 - 12 1/8 inch holes with bit loads up to 90,000 lbf. The DM-H used hydraulics for both drilling and non-drilling functions and featured a hydraulic propel excavator type undercarriage with easily replaceable grouser pads and in-line components on the deck. It was equipped with a rotary screw compressor and a live tower with patented angle drilling system. The tower pivot point was flush to the drill deck and within the dust curtain, reducing the length of unsupported drill rod. It was an all-purpose
Blasthole Drilling in open pit Mining

machine, with a single-pass version added in the mid-1980's. The machine has been upgraded over the years although replaced by the Pit Viper 351 for hard rock applications. At much the same time the company started to offer electric powered versions of the DM 45 and other models if customers wanted them, for instance for use in open pits where the other key equipment was electric powered. However, although these machines had electric motor power packs they retained the hydraulic rotation system. The first electric drill rig was the DM7B delivered to Clarksburg in 1977, followed a year later by the DM100 delivered to Rock Springs. After recovery from the recession of the early 1980s, Ingersoll-Rand launched a medium range Drillmaster, the DM-M designed for rotary drilling of 9 7/8 inch holes with bit loads up to 60,000 lbf. Three of the first four DM-M's went into operation at Peabody Energy's new Nor th Antelope & Rochelle Mine in the Wyoming Powder River Basin, now one of the two largest coal mines in the world. Now, over 25 years later, the prototype DM-M is still in operation. The machine featured a carriage feed system with wire rope cables, resulting in a lighter tower and lower center of gravity. In 1989 this model was upgraded to the DM-M2 on which maximum bit load was increased to 75,000 lbf and the hole size capability extended up to 10 5/8 inch. Stability was improved as well. In 1990-91 the company intro-duced the DML for multi-pass drilling to 180 ft hole depth. This new model could drill from 6 to 9 7/8 inch (200 250 mm) diameter holes in rotary mode, and 6 8 7/8 inch using a downhole hammer. Following a development project based on a customer consultation exercise the DM-M3 was launched at MINExpo 1992. Designed primarily for deep drilling of overburden for cast blasting in large coal mines, the first production DM-M3 went into operation in 1993 at Arch Coal's Black Thunder Mine, one of the largest coal mines in the world. For this new model, the designers raised bit load to 90,000 lbf and the hole diameter range up to 12 inch while a

The DM-H, launched in 1979, could be used with bit loads up to 90,000 lbf (400 kN).

The first Pit Viper 351 was launched in 2000 and used at the Morenci copper mine in Arizona.

Milestonesindevelopment Year 1948 1955 1968 1969 1970 1979 1983 1990 1992 2000 2004 2008 Model DM3 T4BH DM4 DM50 DM-H DM-M DML DM-M3 PV-351 PV-270 PV-235 Loadonbit 30,000 lbf 30,000 lbf 40,000 lbf 50,000 lbf 90,000 lbf 60,000 lbf 60,000 lbf 90,000 lbf 125,000 lbf 75,000 lbf 65,000 lbf Quarrymaster drifter

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The Pit Viper 235 shown at MINExpo 2008.

Big picture: The electric PV-351E at the Boliden Aitik Mine. Inset: The workplace of today with RCS control and automated functions.

new patented cable feed allowed the use of 40 ft long drill rods.

The launch of the Pit Viper


Although difficult market conditions restricted investment in the mid-1990s, during 1997 the company started work on a new generation blasthole drilling rig design. To differentiate this new range from the Drillmaster series, which initially was designed for drilling large holes in coal mining and soft rock, this new series was - from the very beginning - specified and designed for production drilling of large holes in hard rock conditions. The first one out was the Pit Viper 351, which was successfully launched at MINExpo 2000. Weighing 170 tonnes, measuring 53 feet long, and equipped with a CAN-bus control system with seven on-board computers, the new Pit Viper 351 was at that time the largest and most advanced drill rig of its kind. The advanced control system allowed the drill pattern to be transmitted to the drill rig via a radio network, and it also featured production monitoring, rock recognition and a GPS navigation system.
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A few months after the Minexpo show, in April 2001, the PV-351 was put to work at the Morenci copper mine in Arizona for final testing and evaluation. The mine had a fleet of 16 drill rigs from a variety of manufacturers, so in addition to the new rig being used for drilling in the hard igneous rock conditions, this was an excellent opportunity for benchmarking the PV-351 with the other brands. The application required 12 inch diameter single pass drilling of 57 ft deep blastholes using up to 90,000 lbf weight on bit (of the 125,000 lbf capacity). The test was successful: the PV-351 drilled some 2.2 million feet by August 2004 at a recorded average rate of 60,000 feet per month and in some months even more than 80,000 feet per month. Later the same year the multi-pass Pit Viper 275 was launched at MINExpo 2004. Based on the experience from the PV-351, combined with customer consultations, a project had been initiated for development of the PV-270 series. These drills were specified for a 75,000 lbf bit load capacity and were featured a similar cable feed system and automatic cable tensioning to that on the larger PV-351. The multipass version PV-275 with a 195ft depth capacity was

delivered for a test in December 2003 at Peabody's Kayenta coal mine in Arizona where it was used for cast blast drilling for removal of the overburden. This first machine is still in use there and, as a result of the good performance, the mine decided to invest in several additional units. One of these is prepared for quick change between a multi-pass and a single-pass tower as an option to be adapted for different applications at the mine. The first mine to use the single pass version, the PV-271, was the Barrick Goldstrike mine near Elko, Nevada. Since the PV-271 arrived at the mine in April 2004 it has been problem-free, and holds an impressive track record with an average penetration rate of 199 ft per hour. The long component life and also the automatic tensioning adjustments for the cables are much appreciated by the mine. Following this tradition of product launches in Las Vegas, the latest addition to the Pit Viper series - the PV-235 - was shown at MINExpo 2008. This is an advanced mid- range drill for bit loads up to 65,000 lbf, with the RCS Rig Control System available as an option.

acknowledgements
Editors: Kyran Casteel and Ulf Linder Contributions: Guy Coyne, Ron Buell, Kenneth Moffitt, Brian Fox, John Stinson, Dustin Penn, Gunnar Nord, Sverker Hartwig, Jim Langford, Diane Norwood, Darwin Hollar, Ewald Kurt.
Blasthole Drilling in open pit Mining

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