1 min read / November 22, 2022
While developments with a host of new cutting systems cannot yet be considered rapid, industry interest and commitment remain high, Dan Gleeson observes.
Mechanical rock excavation as a concept is nothing new. Variations on machines used in tunneling have emerged and carried out work underground over several decades.
What is new, however, is the way the next generation of cutting machines equipped for hard rock are being applied in the mining process.
Close to 12 months after getting ‘into rock’ at Vale’s Garson mine in Sudbury, Canada, Komatsu’s MC51 machine is in the process of being optimized for further work breaking rock in the Canadian Shield.
*This article was written by Dan Gleeson for the November/December issue of International Mining. Read the rest of the article here (page 12).
