AutoMine in sandvik has made Laronde No.5 mining area win wide attention in North America.

Since 2018, the AutoMine system in sandvik has been mainly tested in Laronde No.5 mining area. At first, there was only one scraper working in an isolated stope. In just three years, it has been expanded to 3 Taishan Tevik LH517i scrapers and 4 sandvik TH551i trucks, and additional automatic driving shifts have been added every week, which has increased the mine output by 10%. In 2021, the scale of the fleet was further expanded to 4 LH517i scrapers from sandvik and 6 TH551i trucks from Taishan Tevik.

Devin Wilson, head of technical services, said, "It took only one month for the operators in Laronde No.5 mining area to get familiar with the sandvik system. This system is not complicated. After mastering the operation essentials, it is very simple to use. "

Scraper operators don't have to sit in the cab to control the equipment.

It may be simple to learn the operating system, but the unique conditions of LaRonde 5 mining area still bring some challenges to AutoMine. This is the first AutoMine application project in North America to transport ore from the mining layer to the stockpile along the transport ramp by automatic driving, and automatic traffic control is needed in this process.

Automation technology is mainly oriented to the application occasions of repeated routes such as transfer layer, but the situation is different in the application occasions of open pit mining. There is no special automatic operation area in Laronde No.5 mining area. The automatic operation area may be different every day.

"For us, this is a truly dynamic process." Wilson said: "In the past, AutoMine and automation have been used to transport muck from point A to point B.. Today, in the LaRonde 5 mining area, we make full use of dynamic processes and may carry out automation operations in different locations every day. "

Marc St Pierre, an expert in mine automation, checks the production plan every day and works out the new route that trucks and scrapers will travel. He said, "The truck will go anywhere we specify. They will drive to the ground in a certain task, and then they may be sent to different operation areas to undertake other tasks. "

Wilson explained that the LTE network in the mine is very important to coordinate the ever-changing route of AutoMine. He said: "We use LTE for communication, which is the key to our automation in the whole mine."

In this dynamic environment, in addition to using AutoMine system, Laronde No.5 mining area also hopes to realize the automation of the whole clearing process from stope to open-pit material pile, which means that self-driving trucks work on the transport ramp, which is another pioneering work in North America.

During the day shift and night shift, the equipment is operated manually, but during the shift change and weekends, the operator will remotely control all the cleaning operations in the operation room on the ground. Sandvik LH517i will start operation from the ore drawing point, and the AutoMine operator will load the bucket in the stope by remote control. Then, the scraper automatically drives to the unloading area, and automatically lifts the bucket when it approaches sandvik TH551i, and the operator pours the ore into the truck through remote control. When the truck is full, the AutoMine operator will send it to the ground via the transport ramp route.

With automatic traffic management, multiple vehicles connected with AutoMine can use the transport ramp at the same time, and the fully loaded truck takes precedence over the empty truck, so as to control the truck safely.

"sandvik has done a good job in the traffic control logic module." He said: "All operations can be completed automatically, and the vehicle runs very smoothly. What we have to do is to send the equipment from point A to point B, and then let the traffic control logic module complete other arrangements. "

The production time of Laronde No.5 mining area increased by 48 hours per week after the automatic cleaning operation was adopted. With automatic operation, the mine can now add two night shifts every weekend and change shifts twice a day.

He introduced that during the shift change, AutoMine operators can usually operate the sandvik TH551i truck four times and 40 times during the weekend night shift, with an average of 136 additional transportation operations per week.

"Mining data shows that after using AutoMine, our daily capacity has increased by 10%." Girard, head of mining operations, said.

Since 2018, the AutoMine system in sandvik has been tested in Laronde No.5 mining area.

Three years later, the output of this mining area increased by 10%.

"The goal in 2021 is 17%, but if everything goes smoothly, the stope location is properly distributed and the system works well, we can increase the transportation volume of automatic removal to 20%-25%." Wilson said: "Today, some of the productivity improvements have exceeded our initial expectations. Without automation, we couldn't increase the daily transportation volume from 2,000 tons a few years ago to 3,000 tons today. "

However, the benefits obtained by the mine are not only the increase in daily traffic. He said, "Using AutoMine to clear the ramp or transport ore out of the mining area, miners do not need to enter these potentially dangerous areas."

"Once they understand the efficiency of this system, they will soon become supporters." Wilson said: "Some operators told us that with automation, they can control equipment from the ground, which will extend their careers in the future. If we don't recognize this system, if there is no strong support from management to underground cleaning engineering, we can't achieve today's results. "

There is no special automatic operation area in Laronde No.5 mining area, 

and the automatic operation area may be different every day.

     "According to the current situation and our needs, sandvik is the ideal choice to realize automation." Wilson said: "In the past 10, 15 or even 20 years, we have been eager to adopt this technology. Now we can say that automation technology is ready and maturing. "