Firstly, to emphasize the improvement, I thought I would show a quick (38 second) video of a jackleg miner hard at work. Jacklegs served Lamaque well for 70 years. However, there is now much more superior technology available on the market, especially for narrow veins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pqVbcqbsaM&feature=related
Now, this next video should be somewhat similar to what our low-profile room and pillar mining approach would look like in the Lamaque 2 mining area (flat veins). You can see the jumbo drills, the blasting, the scooptram loaders and the low-profile trucks. You can see the size of the load being moved and the quickness of the equipment during this very efficient process.
The company is saying that our new low-profile mechanized approach has been extremely successful. If such is the case then mining our Lamaque 2 zone should look somewhat similar to this video (once all of the workers have received proper training and further optimization of the new equipment is realized, and also once they expand more of the previously built tunnels from 6 ft to 6.5 ft - maybe it`s metres, I don`t remember). Keep in mind that they are likely still using some jacklegs and slushers until they receive more of the low-profile equipment. Also, they will always be a need for some jackleg use, especially for difficult areas (it will likely be only occasionally though). However, a very large majority of the room and pillar mining areas will eventually be using low-profile equipment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzsUMXVm49I&feature=related
5 comments:
They are not mining this way
``should be somewhat similar``
``low-profile mechanization``
``jumbo drill`` (picture pg 18 Aug. Corp Presentation) vs ``jackleg miner``
``low-profile`` ``scooptram`` (picture pg 18 Aug. Corp Presenation)
like to know 2 things
1) the jackleg is actually a hydraulic drill that performs what the jumbo drills do, right?--for insertion of explosives?
2) the low profile trucks in the animation video. What is a typical truck load in real life? 2 tonnes? 5 tonnes?
July 6th NR:
``The low-profile underground equipment, in operation since the end of May 2010, continues to make significant progress in increasing the mine productivity and subsequently lowering of underground mine production costs. For example, in certain stoping complexes the low- profile production crews are able to double the size of the mining development round (blast) and remove the ore four to five times faster than using the jackleg and slusher combination.``
``remove the ore four to five times faster than using the jackleg and slusher combination``
Of note, I think a slusher is a type of primitive equipment that was used to pull the material (after the jackleg part was done) to a place where it can be reached for transportation by the other equipment (i.e. trucks). For example, there was slusher hoist or/and slusher scrapers (perhaps they are the same, but not sure). I think the slusher hoist used cables to pull the material horizonally.
With our new low-profile approach (to room and pillar mining of narrow veins) I think the new low-profile configurations allow the scooptrams and the low-profile trucks to get much closer to the material to be transporated, thus eliminating the need for slushers. The low-profile jumbo drills eliminate the need to use jackleg miners.
Everything I have heard so far about our current low-profile method of mining the Lamaque 2 flats is night and day different from the primitive jackleg and slusher approach of the past 70 years.
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