Cat Command for Drilling
Cat® MineStar™ Command for drilling delivers cost-effective, high precision drilling through automation — which will ultimately reduce operating costs, increase safety and improve productivity. Command for drilling ensures that every hole is accurately placed, drilled to the proper elevation and angle, and able to stand up until blasting. A range of capabilities lets site managers configure and automate the drilling system to their budgets and needs. From predrill planning to blasting, Command impacts the bottom line all the way through the crusher and mill.
Safety
- Decreases potential for injury from slips, trips and falls when climbing on and off machine
- Removes operator from exposure to dust and other hazards.
- Minimizes the risk of drilling into bootlegs that may contain undetonated explosive material.
- Use of digital drill plans reduces the number of survey and operating personnel needed on the bench.
- Collision Avoidance System to prevent unwanted interactions on the bench when operating autonomously
Operator Machine Assist
- Automates the entire drill cycle including tramming for a single row of holes.
- Requires operator to stay in the cab of the machine to monitor the area around the drill, ensuring it is safe to autonomously move between holes.
- First step into autonomous drilling enabling the consistent productive performance of autonomous drilling with a lower buy-in cost.
Remote Operator Station
- Removes operators from hazardous conditions, functioning from a location on or off property
- Same control layout as MD6250/MD6310 resulting in reduced training time
- Situational awareness with live camera feeds and audio feedback
- Manage one drill remotely or multiple autonomous drills
- Designed to handle operator interventions quickly and smoothly.
Semi-Autonomous Single Row Drilling
- Automates the entire drilling cycle for one row, including autonomous tramming.
- Removes operators from the cab of the drill
- Flexible and simple, making drilling automation easy to implement and more accessible for all kinds of operation.
- Enables one operator to manage drill operations across the mine site, working from a remote operator station located on-site or at an off-site command center.
- Good solution for miners who want to turn available time into utilized time.
Autonomous Pattern Drilling
- Builds upon the feature sets of OMA and S-ADS to provide autonomous row changes.
- Increases operator skill levels
- Enables higher utilization
- Optimized autonomous operation to upscale drill to operator ratio
- All path planning is done by the system with minimal operator input required
- Good solution for miners with high technology maturity
Scalability
- Follows a building-block approach —which allows sites to adopt automated drilling at different levels.
- No investment is lost as each technology layer builds on the previous building block leveraging previously installed hardware and software
- Offers a range of capabilities — from automating the drill cycle with an operator onboard to allowing one operator to manage multiple autonomous drills from a remote operator station.
- Allows you to configure and automate the drilling system to meet needs today, with the ability to easily grow into tomorrow.
- Scalable architecture that allows sites to readily integrate new emerging technologies in the future
Productivity
- Command operates more hours in a shift than a staffed drill through elimination of idle time such as shift change, meal/bathroom breaks, etc.
- Enables continued use of machine without putting operators at risk.
- Supports consistent productivity through the shift.
- Makes it possible for one operator to control multiple drills.
- Delivers higher, more consistent drilling rates for all operators, result in an increase in overall fleet productivity.
Accuracy & Consistency
- Delivers consistent and accurate drilling that pays off in better blasting, more productive loading and hauling, and more efficient final processing.
- Ensures every hole is accurately placed to plan, drilled to the proper depth and angle, and able to stand up until blasting
- Enhances fragmentation consistency by precisely executing drill patterns.
- Ensures accurate hole placement— to the right location and toe elevation.
- Through improved consistency, reduces the costs associated with fuel, drill tools and explosives.
- Preserves machine life and reduces G.E.T. tool waste by limiting operation to be within the OEM parameters for both the machine and the drill tools.
- Enables consistent drilling from operator to operator on any terrain.
- Reduces machine wear and tear by enabling consistent drill operation under OEM recommendations.
Integration
- Integrates with Cat machine electronic control systems, saving installation time and speeding machine response time compared to aftermarket systems.
- Is designed as part of Cat MineStar, a system that is used and supported around the world on thousands of machines.
- Provides access to all operational features, and notifications of critical machine health parameters.
- Operator Machine Assist fully integrated into the base machine displays of Cat MD6250 and MD6310 drills.
- Semi-Autonomous user interface built on the same user interface platform as Cat drills, enabling a common user interface between Command and staffed drill products.
- Remote Operator Station with the same chair, joysticks and keypads as the Cat drill line; also displays the base machine screens to the operator from the remote operator station.
- Tightly integrated to the existing Terrain HP-GPS system and leverages a bolt-on overlay approach to interface, minimizing interoperability issues and reducing installation time.
Sustainability
- Delivers consistent and more efficient operations to reduce fuel usage, which translates to a reduction in emissions.
- Enables higher machine utilization, for reductions in idle time and less wasted fuel.
- Incorporates machine health technologies and data analytics to maximize asset health and performance, reducing waste.