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 specific emphasis on productivity scenarios. This team sure stood their ground, and I take my hat off to them completing the course in English as they are French speaking. Well done guys, very proud of you, and all the best w

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 assist!

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 estimation, travel time analysis, cost of re-handle etc. Really looking forward to this engagement!

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 silence. With almost a decade of open pit scheduling experience allow me to help you create options for your company, so you can make informed decisions, and understand the risks with confidence!

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 subjected to heat and pressure intense enough to produce schist or gneiss. Garnet is also found in the rocks of contact metamorphism, subsurface magma chambers, lava flows, deep-source volcanic eruptions, and the soils a

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 that rainy day when you need it most...? Difficult questions I know, but prevention is better than cure as they say. Using state-of-the-art mine design software and almost a decade of design experience, I can help you sleep

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 column flotation technology - "Mining.com", Wikipedia. To view the mine in Google Earth, kindly click on the link below: "https://earth.app.goo.gl/yXrXro"

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 experience I can help you dust off that old Whittle model, and make sure your mine is set up to run at maximum profitability under current economic conditions... Doesn't hurt to make sure now does it...

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 forces of the excavator in backhoe operation are 1,760kN and 1,980kN respectively. The excavator is fitted with either two 16-cylinder Cummins QSK60 diesel engines producing 4,000hp power at 1,800rpm or two 12-cylinder MTU

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.

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 assist!

So, you had a consultant do mine planning work on your project - great. The consultant used a variety of specialised software packages to do e.g. a Pit Optimisation, Mine Designs and a Mining Schedule - great. The consultant gave you Excel spreadsheets, a PowerPoint presentation with screenshots and a Word document of the work - great. The consultant also showed you on his/her computer what the work looks like in the software - great. But eventually the friendly consultant leaves and you don't have the software to open the work and look again. What if the screenshots don't reveal the ramp you need to see? Or you need to show your colleague all the great work quickly and efficiently, without

Galena is a lead sulfide mineral with a chemical composition of PbS. It is the world's primary ore of lead and is mined from a large number of deposits in many countries. It is found in igneous and metamorphic rocks in medium- to low-temperature hydrothermal veins. In sedimentary rocks it occurs as veins, breccia cements, isolated grains, and as replacements of limestone and dolostone. Galena is very easy to identify. Freshly broken pieces exhibit perfect cleavage in three directions that intersect at 90 degrees. It has a distinct silver color and a bright metallic lustre. Galena tarnishes to a dull gray. Because lead is a primary element in galena, the mineral has a high specific gravity (7

Don't have a university degree or diploma, but want to further your career in mining and hit that next promotion...? Don't have the means to travel to a far-off location to complete a mining course...? Or maybe you're a scholar and want to study Mining one day, but you have no clue what Mining is about...? Then consider the Mining for Non-miners course. The course was developed by the friendly people at RPMGlobal, one of the global leaders in mine planning software. The guys at RPMGlobal used their incredible breadth of knowledge to develop an on-line course, that is available for 365 days once downloaded. The course covers the whole mining industry spectrum from geology, mine planning, min

The Peñasquito Polymetallic Mine is the fifth largest silver mine in the world and the second largest in Mexico. It is located in north-eastern corner of the State of Zacatecas and is wholly owned by the Canadian company Goldcorp through a Mexican subsidiary, Minera Peñasquito, S.A. de C.V. It is an open pit operation which began operations in March 2010, but still managed to produce 13,952,600 ounces of silver that year. Estimated reserves for the Peñasquito Mine are 17.82 million oz of gold, 1,070.1 million oz of silver, 3,214 tons of lead and 7,098 million tons of zinc. The mine has its own radio station, XHESP-FM 98.9 "Radio Peñasco" - "Mining.com", Wikipedia. To view the mine in Google

We all know what a mining truck looks like in its natural habitat - an open pit. Ever wondered if you release that truck into our urban environment, what that would look like...? Or what would it look like if your spouse and kids stood next to it, posing for a picture...? With the help of my good friend Deon we created a mobile app where you can do just that - explore the splendour of a heavy mining truck, right in your back yard, or anywhere for that matter. The ANDROID version can be download for free from the Google Play Store: "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.schoolofrock.MineTruckAR&hl=en"

A very basic illustration from Venkat Masabattula of the effect of introducing a haul road into the mine design. Note the effect on the average pit slope angle in the illustration bottom left. That's why I would recommend doing mine design iterations as well when selecting truck sizes for your fleet. Bigger trucks means wider roads means more waste for same ore... comments welcome!

For those of you who weren't able to install Deon's blasting programme on your computer, have a look at his YouTube video. It illustrates what you can expect from the programme, which is a portion of the information from the blasting ticket curriculum, on your very own computer... To install the programme, kindly click on the link below... "https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xD-rPlftR-fHcGAYT2wegI5LVtdCSA_3" Alternatively send Deon a mail: deondupreez079@gmail.com He's a super friendly chap and makes the best coffee in the west!!

With an operating weight of 744t, the Demag H740 OS excavator is the fourth biggest mining excavator. It has been in service since 1999 and was specially designed for the abrasive oil sands works of KMC Mining in Canada. The Demag H740 OS is a front-shovel excavator with a wider car body and trackpad than its predecessors. The shovel loading capacity is 40m³ with a breakout force of 2,320kN. The excavator is powered by two 16-cylinder Cat 3516B diesel engines producing up to 4,000hp at 1,800rpm - Mining Technology.

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 assist!