Bits ‘n Pieces – The Driller’s Blog

Let’s face it, core recovery is what it’s all about in diamond drilling – it’s the reason we are out there on a drill site. The more core that you are putting in the box, the happier your boss or the mining company will be. Not surprisingly, this is a topic that our field technicians get asked about a lot and that our subscribers say is a challenge. Read more about improving core recovery here.

At least up here in the Northern hemisphere, winter has arrived in full force. In many regions, the coldest temperatures over consecutive days were recorded, breaking many previous records. The experts say that extreme temperatures are likely to continue.

When we wrote our blog on how to drill really deep holes, we try to include the most important information and tips. Sometimes however, there is too much to cover in one single blog. We want our blogs to be easy to read and not take you too long to get through. The subject of drilling deep holes is an important one and there was information that was not covered in the blog.

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, then a video should be worth a million. Everyone I know prefers to watch a video so I’m always happy when we can offer our customers a video to help explain drilling procedures. Many people in mineral exploration industry are technical and very visual so an animated video is one of the best ways to illustrate how things work.

It’s all about the core. When a drilling project is started, the purpose is to drill and get a decent core sample. You may have to deal with a few challenges but once you’ve dealt with them the last thing you want is to lose the core because of wash out. Your core being washed out is most likely to happen when your ground is not competent, fractured, sandy or full of cobbles. Luckily, there are a few tips that can help you hold onto the whole core sample.

Deep hole drilling is a chance for drillers to strut their stuff and show they have what it takes. Most drillers consider a hole deep if it is deeper than 1,500 meters. At that depth, drilling is a little more complicated and extra care is required. It’s the time you step up to the plate and show your supervisor you can deal with increased load responsibilities. What you don’t want to do is mess up – the deeper the hole, the more money that has been invested in it. A mistake in a deep hole costs a lot of time and money.

Leaking equipment can have very negative results on drilling performance. It can impact your core recovery and prematurely damage other drilling equipment. You cannot always control a situation that starts down the hole so prevention is important. The drill rods are often the culprit but leaks can happen in your pump and other equipment as well.

Core recovery, and how to improve it, is a topic that comes up often in a discussion with field technicians. This is not surprising, since it is the purpose of diamond drilling and every driller and drilling company wants to be efficient and cost effective when drilling. There are several tips that can help you improve your core recovery.

Over this year we have done a few blogs on matrix troubleshooting where we have examined the different wear patterns on a bit crown. The wear profile provides clues as to why your core bit may be underperforming. By changing drilling parameters or making other simple changes, you may be able to improve drilling performance. Not long ago, one of our blog subscribers mentioned having problems with gauge loss on the outer diameter. Let’s look at some of the causes and some of the solutions.

In this blog, our last installment on handling core bits, we look at problems that can happen at the bottom of the bore hole when you’re adding or changing a new core bit. I always say that choosing the right core bit and bit configuration is one of the most important decisions you have to make to ensure you get the best drilling performance. You also need to make sure you handle them properly so that they get to the drill the ground they were chosen for.