Rapid Raising

James (Jim) Peterson

Application Engineer
Caterpillar Global Mining LLC
Abstract
Raising equipment that is commonly used include handheld drills such as Jacklegs or Stopers, Alimak
raise climber also using handheld drills, drop raises using long-hole drills whether top hammer or ITH
drill systems, Raise Bore machines and gang hammers or cluster drills such as the V-30 MRI attachment
tool. Sometimes as a community we forget successful techniques used in the past and need to rediscover
them.
These techniques each has their own different strengths and weaknesses and can be used as blind
raising, drop raising or raise climbing depending on the situational requirement.
Some of the aspects that have to be considered are safety for personnel, cost of operation, initial
development requirements, setup logistics, capital cost of equipment, accuracy of the method,
application requirements of the raise, length and size of the raise, and the speed at which the raising can
be completed.
I-T-H drilling is commonly accepted as one of the more accurate drilling methods, except for short small
diameter holes this is also a very fast drilling method if high pressure air is used. The repetitious cycles
used in many types of raising methods have been a primary factor in the amount of time required to
complete the raise. The time to complete a 25 to 50 meter (80 to 165 feet) raise can take several weeks.
Time costs money and drives up the cost to complete a raise. Some applications have reduced this time
factor by utilizing additional equipment but have resulted in a significant increase in capital and
maintenance cost as well as setup time or additional preparation requirements.
Rapid Raising uses I-T-H equipment which can be readily found at many bulk mining properties. By
using the productivity of high pressure compressed air and large capacity drill tools, 25 to 40 meter (80
to 130 feet) raises have been repetitiously completed in as little as three days due to the ability of
blasting in a single shot. When first introduced customers were able to have all inclusive cost ranging
about $100 USD to $125 USD per foot of raise for 2 by 2 meter to 2.5 by 2.5 meter raise. This is
accomplished by using large diameter I-T-H drill tools to provide sufficient relief (8 to 12.25) within
the raise to permit the blasting of the raise in a single shot without freezing the blast. Mines have used
this technique successfully in Canada, US and Mexico.
Introduction
Use of a raising technique to blast an access passage through rock is used in civil construction projects
as well as underground hard rock mining. These are usually developed vertically but in some
applications driving a raise off vertical is a requirement or highly desired. Experience has shown that the
flatter a raise is oriented the greater the difficulty to successfully complete it. There has been a very
diverse development of tools, techniques and equipment to make raising faster, do it cheaper, stretch out
the length of raise than can be successfully developed and to improve the safety for what has historically
been an extremely risky technique.

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The equipment that is commonly used can be segmented into four groups that have not had much
change in the equipment features as used. These include the oldest technique which incorporates use of
handheld drills such as Jacklegs or Stopers on ladders or on cribbing. As this method was a highly
skilled technique which had extremely high reportable incidents rate and serious accident associated
with it in addition to being a very time consuming method it has been discontinued at most operations
with the exception of narrow vein mining of very high value ores.
The second group also utilizes handheld drilling equipment but with the mechanized rack and pinion
raise climber equipment.
The third group includes traditional Raise Bore machines, gang hammers, or cluster ITH drill.
The fourth group of tools uses percussion long-hole drills with either top hammer or ITH drill systems.
Sometimes as a community we forget successful techniques used in the past and need to rediscover
them.
The performance criteria today has become more focused on three key components; safety; productivity
rate and the total cost per unit of production. To make a cleaner comparison a real life example was used
as the model for equivalent comparison. This example was a 2.44 by 2.44 meter (8 by 8 ft.) raise that
was 42 meters (140 ft.) long and was developed at an angle of 77 degrees off horizontal. The daily work
hours used at this site was equal to 15 effective hours per day. Using this as the comparison model we
have compared the last three raising methods and focused on Rapid Raising that has shown to be
arguably faster and cheaper than the other raising methods for this size raise. Because of this look back
in time the cost comparisons are based on dollar values from 2000.

Figure 1

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Rack and Pinion Raise Climber

This method uses a Raise Climber to transport the worker up to the face of the raise where they use a
stopper or jackleg to drill a blast pattern including a burn pattern or a v cut of 6 to 8 feet deep holes.
These holes are then loaded, the platform retracted and the shot is blasted on shift or at the scheduled
blast time end of shift. The workers then wait for the blast gases to be exhausted before returning to the
face of the raise on the protected platform to scale loose rock and extend the rail of the Raise Climber to
climb closer to the face. This cycle is repeated until the full raise is developed. The calculation has used
on shift blasting as an optimization of this method for comparison purposes.

Figure 2

The raise climber method produces a raise with fairly uniform walls well suited to ventilation air flow or
as utility passages. It is very simple, requiring a relatively low amount of capital investment. However,
it is dangerous with the miner exposed to the possibility of a rock fall at any time.
Comparative rate
Setup time
Raise advance time
Strip out and move time

1.5
10.6
1.5

days
days (4 meters (13.1 ft.) per day)
days

Total time
Total cost $ 820 meter ($256 foot)
Capital Cost

13.6 days
$34,768 USD
$160,000 USD

Raise Bore machines, gang hammers, or cluster ITH drill

The group includes two methods that break the rock in different ways. Blind Hole Boring (figure 4) and
Down Reaming (figure 5) are mechanical mining methods which use pressure applied to the rock face
with cutting discs or roller cones to break the rock. The second method incorporates a combination of
percussive energy combined with ring breaker applying compressive breakage to create the open space.
To achieve the comparative raise size these methods also require some blast hole drilling to break to
final dimensions. Acknowledging that a larger diameter bored hole could provide the same area, this
paper has focused on retaining the comparative model for this paper.

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The blasting sequence is 2, 3, 4 and 5 (figure 3). The complete raise length is usually blasted as a single
event even if decks are used.

Figure 3

This raising method can be more capital intensive, as it also requires a production drill to drill the blast
holes more equipment is necessary.

Figure 4

Figure 5

The design of the blind boring and raise pulling are similar except one machine can be lighter weight
than the other because it applies force by pushing instead of pulling. To maintain hole straightness, nonrotating stabilisers are used which reduce the bending in the drill string. With the raise pulling method

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the highest risk work, comes while attaching the reaming head under the drill string after the break
through is made in the target location.

Comparative rate, Boring

Setup time
Drill pilot hole
Ream to 724 mm (28.5 in)
Drill and Blast 114 mm (4.5 inch)
Move out time

1.5
.75
3.5
2.0
0.5

days
days
days (0.8 meters (2.6 ft.) per hour)
days
days

Total time
Total cost $ 560 meter ($168 foot)
Capital Cost Raise machine

8.25 days
$23,744 USD
$375,000 USD

Blind boring set-up is executed by moving the machine underneath the collaring point where the back
has been excavated to 5.2 meters (17 ft.) The starting tube can then be lifted into position and drilling
starts by inflating a packer and engaging the Rotation and Thrust. When the stroke is finished, regripping is accomplished by shifting the hydraulically operated steering shoes to hold mode. The packer
is the deflated and repositioned to start another stroke. There is no direct exposure under the hole as it is
covered with the starting tube and the chip deflector so there is significantly less risk to the workers.
Comparative rate, Reaming
Setup time
Raise advance time
Drill and blast 114 mm (4.5in) holes
Strip out and move time

1.5
3.5
1.5
0.5

days
days (12.3 meters (40.5 ft.) per day)
days
days

Total time
Total cost $ 560 meter ($168 foot)
Capital Cost Blind Boring pkg.

7.0
days
$23,744 USD
$750,000 USD

Cluster Drill (MRI V-30)

In this method of raising the MRI V-30 tool is used with a heavy duty ITH production drill (figure 6).
The drill may require some optional features to handle the extra loads generated by the V-30. It needs a
heavy duty rotation top drive and auxiliary equipment especially designed for this purpose. The
procedure is similar except that the V-30 tool uses the percussive power of two ITH hammers mounted
together on a rigid frame. The hammers operate using high pressure (350 psi) compressed air delivered
by booster compressors.

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One advantage of the V-30 tool is it is operated on a

ITH production drill so additional equipment is not
required. The ITH production drill is used to drill a
pilot break through hole to the lower target or blind
up to the upper target depending on location of work
area relative to the end of the raise. This hole often
might be drilled at a smaller hole to control accuracy
and then reamed to 254 mm (10 in) to accommodate
the guide stub of the V-30 tool. The V-30 maybe
pulled up from a break through location or pushed up
to a blind area. In both cases the rotating V-30 will
hammer a ring around the pilot hole and a kerf
breaker on the base of the guide stub will break the
rock left between the two holes. Exposure under the
hole is minimal in both these methods as in
breakthrough holes the tool is attached from below
before the V-30 starts its work. In the blind raising
method a chute deflector controls the location of the
drilled debris build up away from the manned work
station on the production drill.

Figure 6

Comparative rate
Set-up Time
Drill Pilot Hole
Ream to 762 mm (30 in.)
Drill and blast 114 mm (4.5 inch) holes
Move out Time

1.0 day
0.75 days
3.5 days
2.0 days
0.5 days

Total Time (including blasting)

Total Cost at $425.00 /meter ($130.00/ft.)
Capital Costs V-30 tool

7.75 days
$18,020.00 USD
$375,000.00 USD

Drop Raising
Drop Raising consists of drilling a pattern of blast holes with a long hole drill (Figure 8). For the size
raise being compared top hammer drilling is not a viable option due to drill accuracy over this depth.
Traditionally 20 meter (65 feet) is the longest hole top hammer can dependably be drilled for this type
application. For ITH drilling generally, the larger the hole diameter drilled with a DTH hammer the
longer the hole can be drilled with accuracy. 165 mm (6-1/2" holes) are better for raises greater than 50
meters (164 feet) than 114 mm (4.5 inch) holes.
The blasting sequence of any blasting round is arranged with respect to any drilling deviation so that the
drill holes with the least burden are initiated first. Limited use of sand, pea gravel or water as stemming
because these holes are continually reused until the raise breaks through to the upper level.

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Comparative rate
Set-up Time (including
Drill holes
Blast

0.5 days
4.0 days
8.7 days

Total Time (including blasting)

Total Cost at $590.00 /meter ($180.00/ft.)
Capital Costs

13.3 days
$25,016.00 USD
No extra expense, use of production drill

Figure 8

Figure 7

Guided Slot Drilling

In this method of creating an initial opening provides a true linear slot composed of interconnected
holes. A standard ITH Drill can be used with only the addition of a swing-away drilling table. A Guide
is attached to the ITH Hammer to maintain the parallelism of the holes to create the slot.
The hammer operates using high pressure 24 bar (350 psi) compressed air delivered or by 220 bar (3200
psi) water if pressurized water is used. A pilot hole is drilled the same diameter as the rest of the holes.
Then the Guide tool (Figure 10) is attached and the second hole is drilled and so on (Figure 9). Five to
eight holes can be drilled as required for blasted rock swell. In raising, it is critical to have sufficient
open area to accommodate both swell and allow some vertical movement either up or down, otherwise
that shot will freeze. After the slot is completed the drill continues with the drilling of the rest of the
production holes.

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Comparative rate
Set-up Time
Drill Slot
Drill and blast 114 mm (4-1/2") holes
Move out Time

0.5 day
3.0 days
2.0 days
0.5 days

Total Time (including blasting)

Total Cost at $328.00 /meter ($100.00/ft.)
Capital Costs

6.0 days
$13,907.00
$30,000.00 Slot saddle and tool

Figure 9

Figure 10

Rapid Raising
Rapid Raising is a variation of Drop Raising. It uses ITH equipment and large diameter ITH drill tools
304 mm (12 inch) hammer (Figure 11) to provide sufficient relief within the raise to permit the blasting
of the raise in a single shot without freezing the blast. This has significantly reduced the repetitious
cycle of deck blasting in short lifts without requiring the use of additional capital equipment.
Method Comparative facts
Set-up Time (including
Drill and Ream holes
Change Drill for small holes
Blast

0.5 days
3.9 days
0.5 days
0.5 days

Total Time (including blasting)

Total Cost $303.00 /meter ($95.00 feet)
Capital Costs

5.4 days
$13,203.00 USD
$38,900.00, DTH hammer and bits

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Figure 11

Figure 13

Figure 12

Figure 14

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Figure 15

Figure 16

The Rapid Raising chart (Figure 17) at San Francisco del Oro shows raises from 15 meters (50 feet) to
24 meters (79 feet) at a rate of 3 meters (9.6 feet) to 4.8 meters (15.3 feet) per hour of work including
drill and blast.

Figure 17

Conclusion
Rapid Raising as shown in the charts (Figure 13) above is the fastest to complete the example raise. In
the cost charts (Figure 14, Figure 16) it is the least expensive method to complete this raise. The chart
(Figure 17) of Rapid Raises reported on in Chihuahua, Mexico also shows the benefit in raises shorter
than the comparative model.
References
1. Dobran, Mauro 2000, Comparison of Techniques to Develop a Slot Raise, WME Drilling 2000
2. Cortez, Jesus Ignacio Martinez, 1998, Development of Rapid Raises in La Mesa Mine,
Chihuahua Mine Engineers Conference

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