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3D Printing to Lower Costs

3D printing has revolutionised advanced industries around the world, allowing engineers to manufacture highly specific components at a moment’s notice. From aerospace to automotive, and from medicine to mining, 3D printing has ushered in a new era of efficiency and development for highly technical businesses. Ready to lean into innovation for the long term? Let’s take a look at how this breakthrough is breaking new grounds in mining. Rapid Prototyping The ability to rapidly prototype specific components and equipment is a godsend to mining engineers. Testing assumptions in record timing cuts down on costly mistakes, increases efficiency, and propels innovation forward by putting advanced manufacturing capabilities in the hands of an on-site team. It’s a boom for individual mine sites, but the overall impact is being felt industry-wide. Supply Chain Management. Because 3D printing allows for many parts to be manufactured on-site, the reliance on ordering and shipping processes can be eliminated. This means reduced costs and increased efficiency as replacement parts may only take minutes to fabricate rather than weeks to arrive. Additionally, downstream costs related to inventory can be reduced as new parts are manufactured on demand. Better Tools As information and designs are collected over time, engineers and companies can design new intellectual property along the way. New tools can be developed and tested on the fly in response to the demands of any given task. When combined with Computerised Numerical Control machining these newly designed tools can disrupt processes long thought to be necessary in mining. Every application from industrial cutting, grinding, drilling, and polishing can be enhanced or performed using high-quality 3D printed materials. On-Demand Protective Gear Although not mining-specific, 3D printing allows for the bulk manufacture of personal protective equipment on-site. As new health and safety challenges emerge, it’s now widely accepted that the need for PPE is not going away any time soon. Equipment such as hard hats, hearing protection, protective eyewear, and respirator masks can all be 3D printed on-site, ensuring workers are equipped to continue their work in the face of the next public health challenges. Immediate Knowledge With the rise of 3D printing in mining, vast libraries of CAD designs are now available commercially. These libraries are growing constantly, creating a globally crowd-sourced knowledge base that can be purchased or shared for immediate use. Eco-Friendly Materials 3D printing is surprisingly eco-friendly, requiring less overall energy consumption and commitment (there are no minimum manufacture requirements), and driving forward the use of sustainable additives and novel plastics. Many broader innovations are likely to spring from industrial 3D printing applications, making this innovation one of the most exciting and promising in sight. Mincka regularly uses 3D printing in the field, using it to create a range of engineering solutions for our clients. Our most common use case is in printing scale models for a better understanding of design outcomes and cross-section reviews.

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Structural Health is Business Health

Why Everything Hinges on SHM It’s often hard to see the damage that occurs over time within vital infrastructure, and as these structures age, their safety becomes a major concern. This can present a huge risk to your business! The last thing any mine site needs is a health and safety scandal. This kind of damage occurs naturally as building materials degrade, due to environmental conditions, or as a result of hard wear and tear, as we often see in the mining industry. Big rocks and even bigger machines cause powerful vibrations to ripple through nearby structures, shaking things loose and causing friction between components. The good news is that with a little foresight, this damage and the associated risks can be easily avoided with a little foresight. Proactive structural health monitoring is vital in keeping your operations running, and your team safe. What is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM?) To keep ahead of potential damage and risks, ongoing real-time observation and infrastructure performance measurement is needed. We call this process structural health monitoring (SHM), and it’s a crucial element in all successful mine site operations. Having the right system in place, before you need it, will alert you to the early signs of failure so that your team can manage the repairs and maintenance before the accumulated damage becomes too costly or dangerous. The more data you’re able to collect, the more accurate your assessments will be. Sounds easy, right? If only! Collecting and processing data around the clock can be expensive and complicated. There are multiple challenges that necessitate an expert approach to structural health monitoring: Identifying the right sensors for the job Using reliable and accurate sensors Maintaining a robust data collection system Having skilled personnel to operate the system Ensuring sufficient power is available to run the system continuously Securing and storing the data Of these challenges, perhaps the most important is having the skilled personnel to implement and operate the system. Converting the raw data into actionable, meaningful insights requires expertise and experience. With the right team at your disposal, the rest of the challenges are effectively managed. Mincka recently performed a vibration survey at the Sojitz Gregory Crinum Mine, using wireless accelerometers, which don’t require a fixed power source. We carried out a series of measurements using a rover-reference technique, in which one accelerometer acts as a reference, while the others move (rove) around the designated area. Our recommendations to relocate nearby personnel to a different area, and to conduct maintenance and modification of centrifuge insulators resulted in dramatically increased health and safety, as well ensuring zero downtime in operations. This is disruptive innovation in action! To learn more about how we can maintain and monitor the health of your infrastructure, use the contact form below and a member of our team will be in touch within 24-48 hours.

Globally Distributed teams deliver innovation faster

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Globally Distributed Teams Deliver Innovation Faster

Mining companies have traditionally maintained large, expansive offices, often in skyscrapers boasting their corporate logos. And it should be no surprise! After all, revenues from mining are enormous and in such a competitive space it is important for a business to project an aura of power and success. In a pre-covid era these offices were a prerequisite, it was just the way things had always been done. Now, after several years of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and uncertainty, these offices are a liability. We are in the age of remote work. The new way of doing business The pandemic accelerated many social changes that were already underway. The most seismic of these being the ability and willingness from both employers and staff to work remotely. For the first time it was acceptable, even admirable, to work from home, and in those early days of the pandemic people were quick to adapt. Out of that adaptation new ways of doing business emerged. More so, new technologies to facilitate remote work became daily fixtures in the home office. Mincka were ahead of the curve on this, and had already been operating with a globally distributed team for several years prior to the pandemic – back when it was an innovative concept. Recognizing the inherent flexibility and advantages of a distributed team, we’ve been building an internal process and culture that allows us to remain close knit, independent, and efficient. Success on every front Our clients love this model just as much as our staff do. For our clients we’re able to deliver on or ahead of schedule by tapping into a global talent pool working across time zones. The diverse range of expertise is apparent in the way our engineers approach solutions. And for our team, well, let’s just say they do their best work when they feel right at home. We work hard to ensure our team is empowered to do their best work, maintain a healthy balance at home, and innovate beyond all known boundaries, technological and geographic, alike. Thanks to how we operate, Mincka are impervious to regional skills shortages, meaning no challenge is beyond our scope. Where other localised engineering firms may be beholden to the best solutions they can find in a given region, Mincka is unbound to explore all of the options, and invent some new ones along the way. One of the benefits to this approach has been the wide variety of cultural insights that a global team inherently brings; diversity of perspective is in our DNA. We have an ear to the ground in every mining region on Earth, and our engineers are positioned to contribute to the advancement of our industry as a whole. Working with Mincka just means that you get there first.

5G Technology: Notes on the Revolution Ahead | Mincka

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5G Technology: Notes on the Revolution Ahead

5G technology promises to reshape mining by streamlining connectivity and data capture in ways never before dreamed possible. It’s a brave new world, and innovating from the front lines is what we at Mincka do best. From persistent communications to virtual reality, here’s how 5G can reshape the future of your business. Accelerating Innovation in Mining with 5G The last 12 months saw an acceleration in 5G pilot programs and testing across a range of industries around the world, as companies grappled with COVID-19 travel restrictions and the logistics issues that soon followed. A 2020 study from Nokia and tech consultancy Omdia, found that 5G technology has the potential to generate up to US$9 billion in productivity improvements in Latin America alone by 2035. In a recent interview, with Mining Magazine, the head of Nokia’s mining business, Jaime Laguna, shared his thoughts on where these savings might come from in Mining, “reliable communications are a key requirement to provide safety in mining environments where people and machines are working together. If the network fails, operations may be interrupted or halted.” This is where 5G’s persistent network provides a new degree of certainty and functionality in mining. Data can be continuously captured and shared, with accurate real-time asset health information available around the clock. It’s clear that 5G technology will transform how we approach and manage safety on-site, too. “5G is all about providing situational awareness, which is a factor that can enhance the current Collision Avoidance Systems by providing location awareness of machines and people and connecting the overall data needed for dangers and alarms,” Jaime adds. Beyond AR Another area of mining ripe for the 5G revolution is the use of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to remove humans from potentially dangerous underground environments. Instead of delving deep into the mines, workers can now rely on fast and accurate 5G-enabled data to remotely remedy situations and perform maintenance tasks. AR glasses and headsets can display real-time asset data, giving miners enhanced visibility in confined and difficult-to-reach spaces. Linking these systems to complex, 3D digital twins of underground mines is the next logical step. “Underground mining could be the perfect work environment for AR or VR, as it is one of those truly 3D work environments,” says Sean Keenan, Global Natural Resources Research Lead at Accenture. “The miners are looking at the orebody from the inside, not just a 2D plan at the surface”. Getting the balance between virtual worlds, augmented worlds, and the real world, will be a tricky process. It’s not yet clear how these technologies will standardise across the mining industry, but what is clear, however, is that this revolution is already well underway. According to the IDC 2021 Worldwide Mining Decision-Maker Survey, 86% of mining companies plan to invest in wireless infrastructure in the next 18 months, with 5G coming in as their top priority. Conclusion At Mincka, disruptive innovation in mining engineering is at the core of all we do. Naturally, Mincka is closely tracking and working to implement cutting-edge 5G technology-enabled solutions.

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Digital Twin deliver Real World Wins

Technology is advancing at an exponential rate. And with the adoption of new innovations in the mining industry, we’ve seen dramatic increases in efficiency and business-wide reductions in cost. It meant greater risk management for those businesses that stay ahead of the curve. It’s a new era of operational transparency, and now for the first time it is possible to have near full visibility across every single aspect of your business. With advances in always-on sensor technology, the amount of data that can be collected is staggering. Digital Twins can help with that. It is no just about data However, there is a catch. These new abilities are not without their own challenges. How do you effectively manage so much data? How do we transform this data into actionable tasks? And who is now responsible for managing and interpreting the data? One of the most exciting solutions is found in the emerging field of digital twin technology. A digital twin is a virtual model designed to accurately depict a real-world physical object. The real-world object being studied — for example, a car dumper — is outfitted with multiple sensors related to important areas of functionality. These sensors can collect data about different aspects of the physical object’s performance, such as energy output, temperature, weather conditions and more. This data is then relayed to a processing system and applied to the digital copy. Once the virtual model has been informed with this sensor data, engineers can then use it to run simulations, investigate performance issues, make lifecycle predictions, and identify and virtually test possible improvements. Depending on the outcome of these simulations, the insights can then be applied to the original real-world physical object. Many applicable uses The benefits are immense. The use of a digital twin allows for dramatic improvements in research and development by enabling more effective design and testing before spending even a single dollar on production. This technology provides a new way to rapidly prototype new assets and infrastructures, subjecting them to real world conditions before even bringing them into the real world. The insights gleaned from digital twins are also useful in assisting engineers in making maintenance and lifecycle decisions by identifying product components in need of replacement long before the date arrives. Combined, this represents a revolution in business risk management. This is the kind of cutting edge innovation that we at Mincka live for! And this is just the start; Digital twin technology is still in its infancy, as new AI capabilities come online and are integrated into the simulation process, new capabilities will continue to emerge at breakneck speed. If your business is working with Mincka, this revolutionary power will be at your disposal, too!

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Drones In Mining: Innovation Takes Flight

Commercial drones have revolutionised the way that many industries now operate by making once dangerous or labour intensive work much safer, more efficient and better informed through dramatically improved data collection. Mincka, and our team of asset integrity consultants, have been using drones in our engineering consulting work for several years, and our clients have enjoyed having this advanced technology at their disposal. Although many advanced industries stand to benefit from the use of drone technology, perhaps the mining industry stands to gain the most. Commercial drones provide several key advantages that many in the industry could scarcely have imagined just a few short years ago. Australia was one of the first countries to regulate commercial drone use in 2002, before the market or the technology had matured. By 2012 the drone industry really began to take flight globally and is anticipated to become a US$41.3 billion market by 2026. Mincka has employed drones to overcome the challenges related to working at height requirements, in particular for visual inspection, which eliminates this risk and eliminates the need for the use of equipment like an elevating work platform (EWP), man cage, or scaffolding. Because mining is an industry that places such a high value on keeping staff out of harm’s way, this represents a huge leap forward for safety standards. It also keeps project costs down and reduces time to completion, which means more uptime and consistency. Drones can also be used to survey large areas onsite, maintaining records of where materials are located and remotely logging project updates. More recently, drone technology is being used to assist with planning work with aerial 3D mapping and capture of topographic data. This makes it easier and more cost effective to identify potential drilling sites and areas that can be used for equipment storage. As drone technology continues to evolve, we anticipate seeing a wider range of sensor equipment incorporated at the hardware level, and the continued evolution of artificial intelligence capabilities at the software level. Together, these developments will revolutionise many of the existing processes and projects within mining and other advanced industries. And, as one of the most innovative and disruptive new technologies at our disposal, we at Mincka have our finger on the pulse of drone technology. Afterall, disruptive innovation is what we do! Drones offer the potential for companies to reimagine the way they operate, reduce costs, and keep their staff safer. Not to mention, providing a massive reduction in project costs and time to completion. If these are priorities for your business, get in touch with Mincka today to find out how we can provide you with innovation for the long term. Use the contact form below and one of our team member will be in touch within 24-48 hours.

Innovation in Action

Category: Blog

3D Printing to Lower Costs

Structural Health is Business Health

Globally Distributed Teams Deliver Innovation Faster

5G Technology: Notes on the Revolution Ahead

Digital Twin deliver Real World Wins

Drones In Mining: Innovation Takes Flight