Bits ‘n Pieces – The Driller’s Blog

Drill sites can be found all over the world, often in some very remote areas. Getting equipment to these sites can be tough.  It’s always interesting to learn about the various methods of transport equipment suppliers and drilling companies use. Some of these methods may surprise you.

Diamond drillers can fall into a routine of using the same equipment over and over. Why not? If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. This is especially true if you are used to drilling in the same region where ground conditions may not vary all that much. However, you may then find yourself drilling in another part of the country, or the world, with conditions that require a different type of equipment.

Water swivels may not be the first piece of equipment that comes to mind when you think about diamond drilling. The rig, the rods and the core bit would likely pop in first. Yet the water swivel has an integral role to play in the drilling process. In surface drilling, the water swivels are responsible for delivering a sufficient amount of flushing fluid to the bit and for hoisting the drill rods in and out of the bore hole. They need to be reliable and you need to choose one with enough load capacity to do the job.

In this blog we have provided a lot of information about how to choose equipment and how to take care of it properly. Every once in a while, it’s a good idea to look beyond the equipment part of the job and focus on how to do the job, or in the case of this blog, how not to do the job.

Drilling parameters are really important when it comes to achieving great drilling performance and extended equipment life. While it is important to choose the right equipment, once drilling conditions change, you need to adjust your parameters to maintain good drilling performance. Understanding how to adjust drilling parameters can help drillers improve performance in difficult drilling situations.

Who would have thought a few months ago at the beginning of this year and this decade, that COVID-19 would impact so much of our lives? We had all heard about it, but it seemed far away. Now it has landed in just about every country and in everyone’s life. It has had a huge impact on so many industries such as healthcare, but how is it impacting the world of drilling and mining? We talked to a few sources to find out.

In our last blog, we looked at the expression “pushing a block”, what it meant and why drillers should never try to advance in a hole when the core is blocked. However, in many parts of the world, especially where dry hole drilling is common, or when the hole is very deep, different advice and procedures should be followed. We are going to look at these different situations and the recommended procedures.

Like many other industries, diamond drilling has its own language. I’ve done a few blogs about the acronyms and the terminology that newcomers to the industry should know. There are always a few expressions that don’t get onto a list and “pushing a block” is one of them.

The launch of a new product for diamond drilling can be an interesting time. Along with logistics and marketing efforts, the technical team is eager to have customers try a new product. We do a lot testing before a launch but as we all know, drilling conditions can vary enormously from one drill site to another. So we are really happy and a little bit relieved when we suggest a new product to a customer and they get great results.

When we wrote a blog a little while ago comparing RC drilling to diamond drilling, one of the things that we didn’t mention was that there is little standardization in RC drilling. Unlike diamond drilling, most of the parts that make up a drill string are not compatible with parts from other manufacturers. This means that configuring, or choosing the types of equipment you need, can be complex and difficult.