NEWSLETTER

SEPTEMBER 09

DEEP DRIFT SCANNING

A project to establish a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab (DUSEL) in the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota, is benefiting from Maptek technology and expertise.
DUSEL will support the underground research needs of major scientific studies in particle and nuclear physics, geology, hydrology, geo-engineering, biology and biochemistry. The dedicated access and diverse geology at Homestake are well suited for studies at extreme depth. Maptek was contracted to collect data in support of the preliminary design and planning of the laboratory. The drift was mined in 1920; no geological mapping was available for the detailed modelling necessary. Maptek scanned the Kirk and Oro drifts at the 300 level to allow mapping of the geology. Narrow confines meant that Maptek I-Site Technical Services Manager Scott Schiele used the Z+F 5006i Imager with an M-cam camera attachment for very close range capture of data from drift and rock outcrops.

Field work over 2 days in April 2009 provided scanning and photographic data for the 1400 ft of interest. Scanning from 70 setups, with 28 photographs at each location, ensured adequate coverage of the underground structures. Issues requiring resolution included access, backsighting and registration, appropriate lighting for photography, and managing the massive volume of data to produce useful results. The Z+F scanner, with a fast acquisition rate and short minimum range, collected 8 million points in 1 min 4 sec, producing a 40 MB file on medium resolution. On high resolution 40 million points were collected in 3 min 20 sec for a 180 MB file. It took about 5 minutes to automatically capture the 28 images post-scan, which were then accurately mapped onto the scan data. When you add 70 scans and 1960 photographs to 70 control points, the result is 8 GB of data. Lighting challenges were overcome by trial and error. Manually pointing a 24 volt source at the photographic area required the scanner motion to be followed closely. When the narrow confines meant that the scanner and light source were very close to the surface been photographed, new lighting options were developed.

Some lights gave a yellow tint, which affected interpretation of the true nature of the geology. An array of lights mounted on a wagon at a lower vantage point than the camera caused shadowing. Manoeuvring both wagon and scanner in the drift was not easy. Now youve got all this data... Scans and associated photographs were imported into I-Site Studio and registered into the coordinate system. Scans were cut into 100 ft sections and modelled, creating photo-rendered triangulations that could be used for mapping the geology. The 28 photographs for each scan were used to map the colour data onto the scan, and one 360-degree photograph was produced for use when importing the data into I-Site Studio.

IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT MAPTEK SERVICES MIGHT BE NEEDED THROUGHOUT THE PRELIMINARY AND FINAL DESIGN PHASES OF THE PROJECT, AS WELL AS DURING CONSTRUCTION.
Dr Zbigniew J. Hladysz South Dakota School of Mines

1 OF 5 C ASH PR IZES SIMPLY B US WHA Y TELLING ABOUT T YOU THINK TAKE THFORGE. E SURV EY: www.m apte
k.com/f orge

WIN

> In this issue

Underground scanning with I-Site Mine planning for underground gold Services deliver MineSuite data on time Vulcan removes barriers to research

I-SITE STUDIO BENEFITS

>> Designed for laser scan data >> Advanced technology undergoing continuous enhancement >> 64-bit computing for large datasets >> Flexible import / export options >> Handles data from all laser scanners

>> CONTINUED

The first step in registration was to manually rotate scans around the origin of the scanner and apply global registration. Scans were then automatically rotated to a more accurate position using I-Site Studios matching features option, which picks common features in scans with overlapping data. Once the data was in the correct coordinate system, unnecessary objects scanner, pipes, wagon and people could be filtered out. Scans of the drifts were cut in half down the centreline, making it easier to remove unwanted points from the middle of each section to better view the geology. Modelling could then begin... A minimum separation of 0.8 ft was applied to reduce 8 million points to 150,000. Triangulations were merged and fused with the 100-foot sections to create one continuous surface. The photographs were then rendered onto this surface, matching the points from the scans to the imagery. The model was then imported into Maptek Vulcan software. Vulcan brings together the 3D photo-rendered model, old geology maps, drillholes and other geological data into the one environment for advanced geotechnical analysis. I-Site Studio is the most advanced software for processing, managing and modelling the point cloud data acquired from laser scanning. While the 64-bit processing power of I-Site Studio proved equal to the task of handling the massive datasets from the DUSEL project, some enhancements were needed to ensure usable results.

One innovation is a new option to allow the viewing and manipulation of medium resolution scans; this provides a manageable file size, while retaining the high resolution data for detailed analysis of specific areas of interest. This streamlined the file load and zoom functions without losing any detail for in-depth geological analysis.

LASER SCANNERS PROVIDE THE REQUIRED COVERAGE AND RESOLUTION FOR UNDERGROUND AND SURFACE SCANNING. MAPTEK PROVIDES THE BEST INTEGRATION OF THE SCANNED DATA WITH 3D CAD GEOTECHNICAL TOOLS.
Thanks to Dr Zbigniew J. Hladysz South Dakota School of Mines

DUSEL BACKGROUND
The DUSEL project is funded by the National Science Foundation. Construction on the two deepest labs is planned to start by 2012. Homestake is the deepest mine in North America with rooms at 8000 ft (2438 m). It is well-suited for experiments requiring extremely low cosmogenic backgrounds. The Yates Formation has well characterised strong rock that can support deep, large cavities to host very large detectors for proton decay and neutrinos from different natural sources. Geoscientists and engineers will be able to research the behaviour of subsurface rock, minerals, water and energy sources.

MAPTEK FORGE

SEPT 09

LASER SCANNING SERVICES WHEN YOU NEED THEM

Maptek I-Site Services Manager, Scott Schiele manoeuvred the scanner and wagon in the confines of the Homestake drifts.

YAMANA GOES FOR GOLD

Fazenda Brasileiro, an underground gold mine belonging to Yamana Gold Inc., has been using Maptek Vulcan software since 1997.
The mine is situated in the Barrocas municipality, Bahia, about 200 km from Salvador, Brazil. Currently, all the geological modelling and mine plans for excavation are carried out with Vulcan. Once the indicated resource has been defined, access ramps are designed using development tools in Vulcans underground menu, with a 5.0 m x 5.5 m drive dimension and 15% gradient. The inclination of the ramp follows the direction of the orebody, and maintains a 15 m buffer distance from the host rock. Where the geometry of the orebody undulates, the ramp design can be adjusted easily to suit equipment specifications and the dimension of drives. Resource definition is carried out by interpreting mineralised contacts within the orebody. The access ramp to the cross-cuts is designed in a longitudinal direction, so that when it intersects the orebody, development mining will be more productive, mining ore instead of waste. Sub-levels are developed every 15 m until the ore drives are established to commence production mining, which involves drilling and blasting. The orebody is very irregular and discontinuous, often described as large scale pockets. The mining method uses sub-level stoping between ore drives. The mine is intensely mechanised, applying international best practice operational and work safety standards

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to underground mining. Work at the mine is scheduled in 3 shifts of 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 360 days a year, with uninterrupted changeover. Drilling on the declines and cross-cuts is accomplished with twin-boom jumbo rigs. ANFO explosive is detonated by a nonelectrical retardation system. All drilling is planned using Vulcans Ring Design tools, allowing fast projection and plotting, and providing a report with all the information necessary for its execution. Drilling in the stopes is carried out in fan patterns, designed in Vulcan. Mucking out the drawpoint and transporting the material to the shaft is carried out by 10 t LHDs and articulated off-road 30 t trucks. In the stopes, the LHDs are operated by remote control. The transported material is hoisted up to the surface via the shaft. The shaft is 5.5 m in diameter and 400 m deep. There are two 13 t skips, with cable guidelines and 1000 HP frictional tow-car. Re-evaluation of the mining parameters and procedure is undertaken alongside drill & blast and extraction. The dilution and recovery data is calculated by comparing what was designed against what was accomplished; information is obtained from the wireframe shapes. A retrospective analysis of the projects in Vulcan aims to establish parameters for reconciliation. Using Vulcan in the Fazenda Brasileiro operation simplifies the processes of indicated resource calculation, mine design, and drill & blast design. The fast and accurate methods allow the Fazenda Brasileiro team more time to spend on analysing their plans.
Thanks to Fabio Ferreira de Oliveira Mine Planning Yamana Gold

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05 01 Stope development with extraction drive 02 Long section view of decline with ore passes 03 Typical drill & blast plan 04 Production shaft 05 Mined stopes

MAPTEK FORGE

SEPT 09

04

MAPTEK MINESUITE SERVICES

Maptek was able to deliver urgently required data from its MineSuite production information system to meet deadlines for BHP Billiton.
A BHP Billiton Manganese Business Intelligence initiative was investigating haul cycle and time usage shift data for their GEMCO Business Unit, on remote Groote Eylandt off the coast of the Northern Territory, Australia. There was a tight deadline on getting a standard dataset back to the South African based development team. GEMCO has been using MineSuite for production recording and reporting

for 7 years. Because some key staff were on leave, GEMCO called Maptek to help meet their deadlines. Maptek technical services staff were able to connect remotely to MineSuite, export the data and report information about the haul cycle within hours. The time usage analysis took a little longer. All the requested data was available in MineSuites historical tables, and Maptek delivered the required information within 2 days. MineSuites comprehensive production recording model and open approach to gathering and providing information across the value chain, ensured that GEMCO captured the data they needed. A client focus attitude meant that Maptek technical services staff could make this information available to GEMCO, under unforeseen circumstances.
Thanks to GEMCO

SERVICES ADVANTAGE
>> Delivery of accurate usable data >> Backup for site personnel >> 30 years experience in mining >> Global pool of skilled technical staff

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES WHEN YOU NEED THEM

Rugged portable fast.

MAPTEK SAVED US 3 DAYS IN SCANNING THE PIT AND ROM PAD. WE COULDNT HAVE DONE THIS WITHOUT THE I-SITE SCANNER AND ROOF MOUNT.
SEPT 09 Drive your operational performance and profitability further! Contact isite.sales@maptek.com.au to arrange a demo.

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MAPTEK FORGE

www.maptek.com

ACCESS OPTIMISATION FOR MINE PLANNING

Good mine planning is fundamental to maximising the value of a mine. A network design team from 3 universities has been developing access optimisation software for more than 10 years, based on new mathematical algorithms. Vulcan is used to visualise complex orebodies and create barrier files.
The access optimisation software >> has been proven by case studies >> facilitates minimisation of both development and haulage costs >> enables cost savings of up to 10% over the life of the mine The team developed DOT (Decline Optimisation Tool), allowing a mining engineer to design an optimal network of declines, satisfying mine constraints and operational requirements while minimising development and haulage costs. A related software product, PUNO (Planar Underground Network Optimiser), designs an optimal layout of level development that minimises the haulage and development costs for ore extraction on each level. It is also able to manage the requirements of different mining methods. Traditional decline design for mine access and haulage relied on the engineers experience and skill. Often only 1 or 2 options were tested in order to limit the detailed repetitive work. Moreover, the emphasis was on minimising development costs rather than the combination of development and haulage over the life of the mine. The new software tools allow an engineer to quickly and effectively test multiple

options to determine the optimal decline and level layout designs, thus minimising the final combination of development and haulage costs.

DECLINE OPTIMISATION TOOL

DOT aids mine planning engineers to design a near-optimal network of navigable declines in an underground mine, servicing a given set of access and haulage points associated with an orebody. 1 DOT finds a network of decline paths avoiding user-specified no-go regions. 2 DOT takes into account operational constraints such as gradient, turning circle, straight sections at junctions. 3 DOT will also determine near-optimal locations for breakouts of subsidiary declines in the network, given the network topology. 4 DOT can automatically select the best choice of breakout points, where multiple options are available. 5 DOT returns centreline strings of the optimal decline, and a summary report showing selected points with development and haulage costs.

Part of the AMIRA project, PRIMO seeks to integrate optimal stope design, infrastructure design and scheduling for underground mines. The DOT and PUNO tools have been further developed as part of this project.

PLANAR UG NETWORK OPTIMISER

PUNO connects access point(s) on a crosscut or decline to a network of ramps and tunnels for level development. Specified points on the stopes are connected to footwall or hanging wall drives and vent raises, with subsidiary ventilation networks, as required by the mining method. As with DOT, PUNO constructs a least cost network, taking into account development and haulage costs. PUNO produces a convenient template for mine designers to add details such as loading and passing bays. 1 PUNO can be given a selection of access points from the cross-cuts or on declines. It will then generate a design for each such access point. 2 Running DOT and PUNO in conjunction, the total cost of level development and network of declines can be computed for a range of access points. Additional savings can be found by approaching the ore zone from different directions.
Recent PRIMO case study, showing DOT for the decline and PUNO for the level layouts

Designs can be easily updated to take into account upgraded cost or geological data. Evaluation of multiple designs from DOT and PUNO can aid in decisions on the mining method, cut-off grade selection, and optimisation of scheduling. DOT and PUNO work particularly well in the Vulcan environment. Specifically, barrier files to avoid the orebody, faults and old workings, can be generated readily using Vulcan functionality. The team has added special features enabling the operator to adjust part of the design, keeping the rest fixed. This is helpful when the search space is very large, e.g. if there are many variable junctions in the network, or if the barriers are especially complex. The Vulcan environment enables the operator to quickly assess which parts of the network need additional optimisation or guidance to move away from barriers.
Thanks to Dr Marcus Brazil, Dr Peter Grossman, Professor Doreen Thomas & Professor Hyam Rubinstein (Melbourne University, Australia); Emeritus Professor David Lee (University of South Australia); & Professor Nick Wormald (University of Waterloo, Canada), and to the PRIMO sponsors for support of the project.

DOT AND PUNO HAVE BEEN PROVEN BY FIELD-TESTING FOR LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL MINING COMPANIES....

MAPTEK FORGE

SEPT 09

NEW CUSTOMERS
VULCAN
LEIGHTON CONTRACTORS has
purchased Vulcan for the Duralie open cut coal mine near Gloucester, New South Wales. Vulcan will be used for geological modelling, mine design, drill & blast design and survey.

I-SITE
BARRICK GOLD CORPORATION - PUEBLO VIEJO PROJECT, in the
Dominican Republic, has purchased an I-Site 4400LR scanner, a mobile vehicle mount and a second I-Site Studio licence. Barrick will use the I-Site system for end of month surveys and extraction volumes as the Pueblo Viejo Mine nears production.

VISIT THE MAPTEK BOOTH

September 21-24 Exposibram 2009 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil October 6-9 APCOM Vancouver, BC, Canada October 14-17 Mining Indonesia 2009 Jakarta, Indonesia Booth 5511, Australian Pavilion October 28-31 XXVIII Convencin Internacional de Minera World Trade Center, Veracruz, Mexico Stands 634 and 653 November 10-11 Austmine Adelaide, South Australia November 18-20 Mine Haulage Conference Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Booth and technical presentation

ORO SILVER RESOURCES LTD,

located in Vancouver, British Columbia, purchased Vulcan GeoStatModeller to develop their sites in Mexico. Sister company, ORO GOLD RESOURCES LTD, purchased Vulcan Enviewer and Open Pit MineModeller to further develop open pit opportunities.

BHP BILLITON MITSUBISHI ALLIANCE [BMA] has purchased an

I-Site 4400LR laser scanner and vehicle mount system for the Gregory-Crinum mine near Emerald in Queensland. The main applications will be end of month survey and stockpile reconciliation, as well as geological highwall mapping.

MITSUBISHI DEVELOPMENT PL
has purchased Vulcan for reviewing joint venture operations, as well as for training staff in Tokyo, Japan, in visualisation capability. Mitsubishi has thermal coal, iron ore and uranium interests.

RODEO CREEK GOLD, a wholly

owned subsidiary of Great Basin Gold, has purchased Vulcan for its Hollister Mine in Nevada. Rodeo Creek will use Vulcan for production resource modelling and reporting.

MCARTHUR RIVER MINING, which produces a single grade bulk zinc-leadsilver concentrate for global markets, has purchased an I-Site 4400LR laser scanner for surveying stockpiles and end of month pickups in the open pit. MRM is wholly owned by Xstrata plc, and is located 900 km southeast of Darwin in Australias Northern Territory. OZ MINERALS has purchased an I-Site
4400LR laser scanner and vehicle mount system for the new Prominent Hill coppergold mine in northern South Australia. The main applications for I-Site will be pit, ROM and stockpile surveys. The mine was commissioned in February 2009, with first sales of concentrate in April 2009.

2010
February 8-10 SPAR 2010 - Houston, Texas, USA February 21-24 SME - Phoenix, Arizona, USA March 7-10 PDAC, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

VALE AUSTRALIA PTY LTD has

acquired coal assets in Australia to strengthen its global business. Vulcan is being used for projects in Mackay and the Broadlea mine in Queensland.

QUARRY TECH INC., in New Brunfels,

Texas, has purchased I-Site Studio software for processing laser scan data for stockpile volume measurement.

VENTUREX RESOURCES LIMITED

is renting Vulcan GeoModeller for modelling and resource evaluation of the Evelyn Prospect in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia.

www.maptek.com
Maptek Forge newsletter is published quarterly. You can receive it by mail, emailed pdf or emailed link to the Maptek website. Email forge@maptek.com to subscribe or advise changes to contact details. Articles may be reproduced with acknowledgement. 2009 Maptek

Maptek staff at the Australian Institute of Mine Surveyors Conference in Perth, August 2009

Maptek, Vulcan, I-Site, and MineSuite are registered and unregistered trademarks of Maptek Pty Ltd; Maptek Computacin Chile Ltda; Maptek Computacin Chile Ltda, Sucursal Per; Maptek S de RL de CV; Maptek Informtica do Brasil Ltda; and KRJA Systems, Inc. Registered marks are registered in one or more of the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Greece, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Spain, UK and USA.