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Hello
Welcome to Lesedi Drilling’s electronic newsletter.
My objective in producing this newsletter is to keep the Lesedi customer base up to date regarding company developments which are aimed at improving our productivity and safety.
Our productivity efforts have 3 main approaches:
A. Improve the technology employed in our machines and tools
B. Continuously improve the skills of our employees
C. Reduce the downtime in the system (e.g. machine breakdowns, AWOPS, client service delays)
A. Improve the technology employed in our machines and tools
- From a drilling technology perspective: Pneumatic drills have not changed in 50 years. This means that in order to improve productivity we actually need new generation drills, but in the interim, in order to maximize productivity from the standard pneumatic machines, we are working at improving the training of our people, reducing system downtime and improving the performance of the tools that we use.
- Modern Drills: We are engaged with our customers in switching our pneumatic drill fleet away from obsolete pneumatic drills to a new generation hydraulic drill. Most of this work is being undertaken at AngloGold’s Vaal River complex and we are extremely excited about the impact this will have on our productivity. Once free of the restrictions forced upon the design engineer by pneumatic technology, the new drills should offer safer and much more productive drilling. We expect as much as an initial 3 fold increase in productivity.
- Diamond Tools: We are working in conjunction with our suppliers to improve the cutting rates of the diamond tools – either by changing the matrix types, diamond configurations or kerf width (kerf thickness is the surface area of the cutting edge of the diamond bit. The thicker the kerf, the more material is cut away by the bit during drilling.)
B. Continuously improve the skills of our employees
There has been a big increase in underground drilling activity during the last 2 years as mining groups realised the potential cost savings that could be achieved through making fewer mine development mistakes by working with known future conditions. This improvement in the degree of certainty in the mine design and development process is achieved by increased diamond drilling in advance of the development work.
Unfortunately the drilling industry retrenched huge numbers of workers when the gold mining industry cut back during the 1990’s and much of the new workforce consists of novices. As a result there is a major training imperative to improve productivity and we have interesting future plans in this area.
C. Reduce the downtime in the system
As the mines age, compressed air has a tendency to weaken at the point of use due to the distance of this point from the compressors. This weaker pressure, along with difficulties associated with ventilation, water delivery and pressure, and longer underground commute times all put demands on the available drilling time. It is a continuous joint venture with our customers to ensure the available drilling hours are maximized.
We would like to invite you to track our progress on these projects and meet some of the people involved. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of our journey with you.
Kind regards
Gordon Hogan
The starting point for any improvement process is to analyze the current productivity statistics. Below are the heroes and the laggards.
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