Thank you to all my clients that have faithfully supported me over the years. It really is a privilege and an honour to meet so many friends around the globe. I hope all of you have progressed in your careers, and I wish you all the best, and looking forward to make new friends in time to come!!

Are you 100% confident that your Excel calculations are correct in determining fleet numbers? Are your roads accurately set-up in terms of stop signs, single carriage areas, steep gradients, single-bay dumps? What happens when you have congestion in your pit, how does Excel cater for that? With the HAULSIM simulations you can set up your site accurately to generate realistic results in terms of fleet numbers. The simulations allow you to run a host of possible scenarios, to e

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 (OPMS & SMS) allows you to do just that - run scenarios instead of suffering in silence. With almost a decade of open pit schedulin

Sugilite is a rare mineral and a gemstone best known for its vibrant pink to purple colours. High-quality specimens are sought after by mineral collectors and lapidarists (people who cut and polish gems). Sugilite is a sodium potassium lithium silicate mineral. Small amounts of manganese produce the pink to purple colour displayed by some specimens of sugilite. Its chemical composition is as follows: KNa2(Fe,Mn,Al)2Li3Si12O30. The composition of sugilite varies because iron,

The kind guys at RPMGlobal have agreed to reduce the price of this online course significantly to accommodate students and self-paying employees. The online Mining for Non-Miners training course is the perfect starting point if you work in, or with, the industry but don't come from a mining background. The course modules include: [if !supportLists]· [endif]Overview of the Mining Industry; [if !supportLists]· [endif]Geology, Exploration, Modelling & Reporting;

Toquepala copper mine, situated 870km away from Lima in Southern Peru, ranks as the world’s fifth largest copper mine by reserve. The open-pit mine was estimated to contain 17.65Mt of copper reserve as of December 2012. Southern Copper Corporation (SCC), a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, owns and operates the mine. Toquepala produced about 152,000t of copper in 2012, including 120,000t of copper concentrates and 32,000t of copper cathodes. Ore is extracted from the Toquepala porp

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

The Bucyrus RH400, now owned by Caterpillar, is said to hold the title of the world's biggest hydraulic excavator. This monster is a front shovel excavator and weighs in at around 980 tonnes. This mine chewer has an undercarriage width of 8.6 meters and crawler length of 10.98 meters. Just one scoop of the shovel can remove 45 cubic meters of material. With a crowd force of 3,300 kN and a breakout force of 2,400 kN it will defy any unfortunate rock face to resist this machine

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

After starting an overhand stope the shape in which the back is carried is often of prime importance. Position A in the figure illustrates the method of carrying a flat or longitudinal back (the term long-wall is used sometimes when the vein lies nearly flat). In this method the benches or breasts are frequently made of a height sufficient to allow of a square set being placed. This is done at Butte and it is often referred to as breast stoping - 911 Metallurgist.