Engineering & Mining Journal

NOV 2012

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UNDERGROUND DRILLING Cameco 'Pushes' New Borehole Survey Method A mechanized, power-utility industry tool used for driving rods through crowded electrical conduit finds a cost-saving niche in underground exploration drilling Trevose, Pennsylvania, USA. The device is designed for push- ing continuous lengths of specialized fiberglass rod through utility conduits. Prior to the development of the Portable Powered Duct Rod Pusher, utility construction work crews usually had to manually push 3 ⁄8 - or ½-in.-diameter fiberglass rods into conduits 1,000- to 1,200-ft long—a method that was difficult and time-consuming. The introduction of GMP's Portable Powered Duct Rod Pusher changed all of that; the mechanized pusher was able to muscle rods through crowded or collapsed conduits with- out need of human effort. The machine features two oppos- ing drive tracks that securely clamp down on a fiberglass rod. Its hydraulic drive motors then push the rod into the conduit with a force of about 300 lb at speeds up to 130 ft/minute, substantially more force than two men can generate on a con- tinuous basis. Once the rod is pushed to the end of the con- duit, a pulling line is attached to the end and pulled back by the machine. The conduit is now prepared for pulling a cable using the pulling line. Uranium producer Cameco is on track to begin early-stage mining activity next year at its Cigar Lake project in Saskatchewan, Canada, with full production targeted for 2017. (Photos courtesy of Cameco and General Machine Products) Cameco Corp.'s Cigar Lake uranium project located in north- ern Saskatchewan, Canada, is considered the world's largest undeveloped high-grade uranium deposit. Cigar Lake is cur- rently in development with a target to begin commissioning the mining process in ore by mid-2013, and ramp-up to full production by the end of 2017. The Cigar Lake Technical Services Group—the company's on-site engineering team—along with the Geology depart- ment, has used geotechnical drilling rigs to deploy light- weight borehole survey tools for orientation mapping and geotechnical logging of underground boreholes. However, the geotechnical rigs—large, powerful tools meant for high-thrust applications—are labor intensive and expensive to operate, and that money is better spent on the drilling operations they were designed to do. "The drills are in high demand for use in conventional applications," said Devon Loehr, Cameco mechanical engi- neer. "So, availability of the drills for survey tool deployment, and crews to run them, is limited." The Technical Services Group (TSG), realizing that using geotechnical drills for survey probe deployment was ineffi- cient, sought an alternative approach—one that was smaller, compact and mobile—that could accommodate their need for deployment of survey probes, weighing approximately 10 to 50 lb each, into overhead vertical 5-in.-diameter boreholes. While searching the Internet, TSG discovered the Powered Duct Rod Pusher by General Machine Products Co. (GMP) of 62 E&MJ; • NOVEMBER 2012 "The Portable Powered Duct Rod Pusher proves to be a very efficient way to rod and place pull lines in utility conduit systems," said Bob Young, sales and applications engineer for GMP. "It can be up to four to six times more productive than traditional hand work methods." The original design enabled the device to push fiberglass rod along relatively horizontal planes, handling just the weight of the rod itself plus friction. But, was the pusher powerful enough to push rods 200 ft vertically, Loehr won- dered. While it could generate 300 lb of force with its hydraulic motor system, the TSG team needed to push up to 50 lb of survey instruments plus the weight of the rod. They also wondered if the standard ½-in.-diameter fiberglass rod would be stiff enough to vertically deploy the load into a 5- in.-inside diameter, steel-cased borehole. The Portable Powered Duct Rod Pusher by General Machine Products Co. www.e-mj.com

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