Tag Archives: Innovation in Mining Virtual Event

Sandvik to accelerate rock drill developments with new innovation centre

Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, in an effort to speed up rock drill innovations, has opened a new Rock Drills Innovation Center in Tampere, Finland.

Announced during day one of its Innovation in Mining event this week, the centre will introduce state-of-the-art production and testing facilities for this core Sandvik technology. It will be home to extensive rock knowledge and drilling technology expertise, creating a hub for innovation, the company says. The centre will also complement Sandvik’s existing leading drilling technology competence centre, consisting of an R&D centre, an underground test mine with laboratories, a modern factory environment and university cooperation.

IM put some questions to Timo Laitinen, Vice President of the Rock Drills business unit, to find out more about the €18 million ($21 million) investment.

IM: How will the new innovation centre help the Rock Drills business unit more rapidly develop new products?

TL: We wanted to bring all key functions needed in the development and production of rock drills under one roof. This makes communication between different functions more effective and enhances cross-functional work when developing new products.

Also, as reliability is the most important characteristic in rock drills – and the key feature of Sandvik rock drills – based on our recent customer survey, we increased our durability testing capacity. Now we can do even more endurance testing in a shorter calendar time.

Thirdly, our factory investments speed up prototype production, minimising waiting times between the iteration rounds. All these speed up time to market.

IM: What new technology, expertise, innovation, etc will you be leveraging to speed up the R&D and product development pipeline?

TL: In addition to what I mentioned above, we utilise a Lean & Agile methodology in our R&D with increased customer involvement, transparency and cross-functional cooperation. As Sandvik’s drilling equipment development, as well as digital technology development, happens for the most part here in Tampere at the same site, we can leverage that work for rock drill development too. Digital technology helps read data from Sandvik drilling equipment and service operations around the world, which we utilise to create even better rock drills. Sandvik’s expertise in machining solutions has helped us to integrate advanced quality assurance solutions in our production system. This generates valuable information for rock drill research and development.

IM: Will the Rock Drills business unit have a designated area of the Tampere Test Mine to test prototypes? Was the division previously using the existing test mine facilities?

TL: We have always had a certain designated area in our test mine for rock drill testing. With this investment program for the Rock Drills Innovation Center, we did build a new area in the test mine for this purpose with increased safety and functionality, more capacity and more space.

IM: In terms of R&D, what areas will the innovation centre focus on? What problems/challenges are your customers continuously talking about that you hope to address with this new facility?

TL: Drilling the holes for explosives comes first in the drill & blast production cycle, followed by the other phases of the cycle. Therefore, it was not a surprise to us when the customer survey result was that ‘reliability’ was the most important feature of a rock drill; followed by productivity and operating cost per metre. In addition to further developing these features in Sandvik rock drills, digital technology is sneaking into our rock drills. Our Rock Pulse technology is a prime example of new technology, which helps our customers drill more, better and at lower cost.

Sandvik to expand battery-powered drilling range with DL422iE & DS412iE

Having electrified its DD422i development drill, Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology is now looking to extend its battery technology to two more of its intelligent drills: the DL422iE top hammer longhole drill and the DS412iE rock bolter.

During the Innovation in Mining virtual event this week, it came to light that the company is currently testing a battery-equipped prototype DL422iE unit in Canada ahead of a planned launch in the March quarter of 2021.

It will be joined later in 2021 by the DS412iE rock bolter which, with the existing DD422iE drill, provides a full range of electric drills for all applications; all of which offer battery-powered tramming and carry out bolting or drilling when connected to mains electric power.

These newest battery-powered vehicles are based on the DD422iE technology with intelligent control system and a wide range of automatic functions, engineered to provide top-level performance, accuracy and reliability, the company says.

Sandvik to show off newest battery-electric loader next week

Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology is set to announce details of its new battery-electric LHD at its Innovation in Mining Virtual Event next week, Brian Huff, has confirmed.

Speaking on ‘The Next Generation of Battery-Electric Vehicles’ event on Tuesday, Huff, Vice President of Technology at Artisan Vehicle Systems, a Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology Business Unit, said a new machine would be announced on September 29 at the virtual event. He later confirmed the loader in question would be on show.

Not too many details were given away about this new BEV, but Huff confirmed it would be “another machine to fill out our weight class” and host, Martina Lundgren, said the loader represented the first joint project between Artisan and Sandvik since Sandvik acquired Artisan in 2019.

In addition to announcing this news, Huff also confirmed that “there will be a larger class…haul truck intended mainly for the Australian market” coming from the company in later years.

As it stands, the company’s largest payload battery-electric haul truck is the Z50 50 t machine (pictured), which has been trialled at the Barrick Gold-owned Turquoise Ridge gold mine, in Nevada, USA.