MineSight introduces a new product from the MineSight Axis Grade Control suite: the Digblock Optimizer (DBO)!
Quality control (Grade Control) is essential for short-term success, detailing materials and their respective destinations to reach your production target. Bad Grade Control practices lead to improper or inadequate optimization of the design of your cut, causing too much dilution or even misclassification to which destination it will proceed. MSAxis-DBO generates economically optimized cuts to be used in your mine's quality control.
In many open pit operations, fire plane and minefront clearance polygons are used as a starting point for quality control. These generated cuts can be manipulated to meet specific needs based on economic factors, deposit geometry and mine equipment.
Figure 1 – Fire plane polygons.
Deposit economics are very important for mining operations to maximize their profits. Current practice for generating the slices involves manually digitizing polygons based on the block model. This interpretation can vary greatly, being either very conservative or very optimistic, depending on the quality controller. However, this variation can directly affect the economic viability of the material mined, so the DBO tool removes this factor/influence inherent to each person.
Figure 2 – User-interpreted, digitized cut to separate material based on cutoff.
With respect to practical considerations in mining operations, these optimized cut polygons are often different from the mined material, and in some cases need to be adjusted. For quality control to have a comparison based on optimized cuts to generate the operational cut, it is essential not to make destination mistakes, not to dilute the material too much and especially if there are different processes for a given type of material.
As the DBO tool is designed primarily for quality control (Grade Control), it is expected that this step will be implemented soon after the fire plan is designed. However, it can be applied to create short/medium term plans, generating bank-by-bank and phase-by-phase cuts.
So how does the MSAxis-DBO tool work?
The tool works by assigning a digitized polygon or selective mining unit (SMU) over the block model. The SMU represents the smallest geometry that can be mined considering the site equipment. Cells within the SMU are evaluated as groups and thus decide which is the most economically viable destination/route, eg ROM or Waste Dump.
The DBO tool requires three main components:
- The Net Smelter Return (NSR) calculation that will help determine the NSR value for the block. NSR is defined as the resale value (total resale minus associated production costs) received from the sale of mine-generated product, less the cost of transportation and refining.
- The NSR value of the block/SMU that will help determine the correct material to be mined for the entire SMU including the minimum loss of profit.
- The type of material that will ultimately decide the destination and route for the mined material.
Figure 3 – MSAxis Process Manager: interface showing a minimal configuration for the DBO.
The configuration step of the DBO procedure requires the input of several parameters, such as the fire plane polygon, block model, and the holes from MSTorque or MSCompass.
During the calculations step in the model, only three calculations are performed. These are:
- Calculation of NSR;
- Calculation of destination of types of materials;
- Resale calculation for the block model.
This interface also allows you to control the current cost of the commodity through variables.
The final stage is the Digblock Optimizer operations. This is when the SMU is configured and the variables calculated in the previous steps are correlated. Once the process is complete, the optimized polygons of the cuts are stored in MineSight geometric objects.
Figure 4 – DBO polygons generated and saved in geometric objects.
The DBO tool is part of the MSAxis package! If you want more information, we are happy to provide it.
As an alternative to the previous minimal routine, this tool can be incorporated into a broader context which completes short-term routines and quality control on your site:
Figure 5 – MSAxis Process Manager: interface showing a case study of quality control (Grade Control) with routines to update the model and incorporating the DBO as a final step.
Once the cut-optimized polygons are obtained from the DBO, they can be imported into MineSight Planner for assignment, manipulation and export to the mine operation in accordance with mining operation practices.
The example below shows an MSPlanner configuration using DBO optimized polygons and manual polygons based on optimized ones to generate short-term operational plans.
Figure 6 – MSPlanner project containing the DBO polygons and manuals.
Figure 7 – Above, manual polygons. Below, DBO optimized polygons.
Hexagon Mining | MineSight is committed to continuous development and improvement of this tool and, in the near future, you will also be able to count on:
- Directional mining controls – with this option, the local mining direction will be taken into account, very important for deposits where the equipment allows the mining of strip cuts.
- Different Optimization Algorithms – Like the many algorithms used to generate the optimized cuts in DBO, more functionality will be added to redefine the calculations according to your mine.
- Optimized Cut Geometry Control – The functionality to create more operational cuts that will reduce geometry manipulation time.
For any information about the MSAxis DBO tool, please contact us! It will be a pleasure to chat about the news to speed up your short-term activities and quality control!
To the next!!!
