A special congratulations to Firmin and his team for completing RPMGlobal's Professional Development course this week. The first 2 days were dedicated to Mining Economics, completing a number of spreadsheet exercises ranging from discounted cash flows to discounted average costing, that will probably make any chartered accountant proud. The following 2 days were spent learning Truck&Shovel basic principles, including HAULSIM simulation exercises to prove the theory, and speci

Take control of your career and get empowered by these mine planning courses. Companies want their employees to do the job using software, and this is exactly the exposure you get when you create a mine design and schedule during these courses. For your convenience, there is an online booking facility to secure your spot and avoid disappointment: "https://www.schoolofrockmining.com/book-online" Alternatively send me a mail at: info@schoolofrockmining.com and I’ll gladly assi

Flying to the great city of Abidjan tomorrow night, presenting an RPMGlobal Professional Development training course in Mine Planning for one of their clients. The first 2 days will be dedicated to Mine Economics by virtue of completing a number of classroom exercises, ranging from simple discounted cashflow, to marginal costing, to payback period & sensitivity analysis. The following 2 days will be dedicated to truck & loader simulations in HAULSIM, ranging from productivity

Battling with the software to set up a mining schedule? We all know the feeling... when you're losing precious time because of fighting the software instead of running iterations and scenarios... You will never have confidence in your schedule if you do not have 2 or 3 scenarios to test the flex of your system. Your superiors want a number of options, not just one answer. RPMGlobal's XPAC SOLUTIONS products allows you to do just that - run scenarios instead of suffering in s

Garnet is the name used for a large group of rock-forming minerals. These minerals share a common crystal structure and a generalized chemical composition of X3Y2(SiO4)3. In that composition, "X" can be Ca, Mg, Fe2+ or Mn2+, and "Y" can be Al, Fe3+, Mn3+, V3+ or Cr3+. These minerals are found throughout the world in metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary rocks. Most garnet found near Earth's surface forms when a sedimentary rock with a high aluminum content, such as shale, is

How sure are you that your mine designs have the minimum number of switchbacks? Have you tested the impact of having one switchback less, how that reduces your strip ratio and down-the-line costs, not to mention the health & safety of your employees ...? What about your benches & stacks, do they honour the geotechnical slope angles to prevent slope failure...? Your ramp systems on your interim high-walls - do they tie up with your final design and serve as dual access for tha

Mount Isa Mines Limited ("MIM") operates the Mount Isa copper, lead, zinc and silver mines near Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia as part of the Glencore group of companies. For a brief period in 1980, MIM was Australia's largest company. It has pioneered several significant mining industry innovations, including the Isa Process copper refining technology, the Isasmelt smelting technology, and the IsaMill fine grinding technology, and it also commercialized the Jameson Cell co

The mining industry is notorious for its volatile nature as commodity prices fluctuate. History shows that it's the companies that can adjust to the market changes the quickest that lead the pack. Mining on a 5-year old mine design that was based on a Whittle shell all those years ago can mean you're either leaving value in the ground, or more detrimental, you're now mining in areas where profitability is going South... With almost a decade of Whittle open pit optimisation ex

The excavator in third place is the Liebherr R9800. It was built by Liebherr at its Colmar factory in France in 2008. The excavator is available with a shovel attachment, weighing 810t, or a backhoe attachment at 800t. The cab height is 9.91m and the undercarriage measures 10.84m long. Both the backhoe bucket capacity and the shovel capacity of is 42m³. The maximum crowd force and a breakout force of the shovel are 3,090kN and 2,395kN respectively. The digging and breakout fo

This clip from the Australian Centre for Geomechanics is a training video for underground metalliferous mine workers. The aim is to provide workers with the critical knowledge on drilling and blasting and to aid appreciation of the importance of these mining processes and their related hazards.