Electric rope shovel monitoring

Another piece of the automated drill-to-mill process information system has recently come to the marketplace: electric rope shovel monitoring. This mo nitoring has two broad functions: measuring dipper payloads to +/-2%; and p lotting diggability maps as the GPS location and diggability of every dippe r is monitored. This paper addresses the application of automated monitorin g of electric rope shovels to improve performance and blasting technique. The cost benefits of accurate truck loading, described as +/- 10 tonnes of rated truck capacity, using dipper payload calculations is accepted at many mines. Underweight and overweight loads potentially cause lost production, labour inefficiency, reduced engine life, reduced tire life, truck frame d amage, and excessive truck component wear. The cost benefits of being able to easily tie the diggability of each blast with the drilling and blasting technique used are not yet proven, but the research tools are only now available in the form of a monitor that weighs every dipper to +/-2%, and also records the accurate GPS location of that d ipper's source and assigns a diggability index to it Diggability maps, base d on how difficult the pattern was to excavate, will be an invaluable tool to increase the efficiency of blasting and to reduce costs.