Dyno Nobel showcases underground blasting innovations

Dyno Nobel demonstrated DriftShot, its newest electronic initiation innovation, at its booth at MINExpo International 2016.

According to Dyno Nobel, DriftShot joins a suite of electronic initiation systems from Dyno Nobel and DetNet, the company’s joint-venture partner. Designed for underground blasters, Dyno Nobel says DriftShot offers a new level of timing accuracy that enables blasters to achieve reduced scaling, reduced overbreak, more consistent fragmentation and optimized use of explosives energy.

Minimal components are used at the face in DriftShot. Only an electronic DriftShot detonator in the borehole and a two-wire busline on the face are used at the face, the company says.

In addition, no programming at the face minimizes errors and makes the loading and hookup process easy, Dyno Nobel adds. The blaster simply clips the detonators onto the busline, and the Tagger identifies the delay period and number of detonators of each period contained in the blast.

Dyno Nobel also showcased BlastWeb, which can be used in tandem with DriftShot, at MINExpo. BlastWeb, which the company is currently introducing to North America, is an electronic networking system that’s designed to reduce costs by decreasing time spent on production and development blasting in underground operations.

According to Dyno Nobel, BlastWeb is a centralized blasting system that has the capability to communicate on different platforms; initiate up to 24 blast control units; and reduce production time by up to an hour a day. The system also improves safety, allowing for blasts to be initiated above ground or in a distant safe location, the company adds.

Campbell Robertson of @dynonobel demonstrates the driftshot electronic initiation system at @MINExpo2016 #mine16 #MINExpo2016 #MINExpo pic.twitter.com/S5wqHciBds

— Pit & Quarry (@pitandquarry) September 26, 2016