Lectures Covered

We covered an introduction to the 2008 project.  I have added material to clarify what numbers each of you should be looking for.  Please review these notes for your Week 1 reports

2008 Sr Design.ppt

 Assignments Issued

Note - The Cash Flow for Silver City Project is Completed

Click on the File Below

Silver City Cash Flow Spreadsheet

Special Data Entry Assignment for Apr. 7, 2008

Team members - enter cost and other data from your designs to date in the Silver City Spreadsheet below and e-mail the revision to me.

Tim - I need your truck cycle time and operating cost per ton for loading and hauling ore, leach, and waste during each of the 7 phases - look for orange fields around C109.

Tim - I need your operating cost per hour for your trucks, shovels, and front end loaders and the payload of your truck.  Look for orange fields around B180

Will - I need to know how many D9s and D11s you are buying.  Look for orange fields around B77

Will - I need your $/hour operating cost for FEL's working surge piles and loading them through the gyratory crusher when the mill goes down.  I need your $/hour operating cost for a D11 working the waste dumps.  I need your $/hour operating cost for your road graders and water trucks.  Look for orange fields around B184.

Copy of Copy of Silver city Cash flow.xls

Tim - Please review this observation for whether it is true or not.  The Mill tonnages you provided me for each stage appears to increase.  I believe when you ran your resources you ran the total resources for stage #2, rather than the total resources between pit stage #1 and pit stage #2.  This type of error continued through subsequent phases.  This could cause you to over-estimate the tonnage to move in 3 years with the result of mis-sizing your truck fleet.

The spreadsheet above gives the tonnages in each phase assuming you made this error.  Obviously the numbers are wrong if you really mined 700,000,000 tons of ore in a 3 year phase at going from pit #6 to your ultimate pit.

If you find you did make this error could you rerun your resources on the pit phases getting resources between pit #1 and pit #2 etc.  I need the average copper and moly grades for your mill ore, leach ore, and waste for each phase as measured between pits - not cumulatively for all pits up to that point.

Assignment for Tuesday Apr. 1, 2008

Team members fill in the missing data on the spreadsheet below.  Fields needing input have their labels in column A in red and have boxes for data to be input in orange.  The following information should be known and entered.

Blasting studies should have given you initial numbers of BE R-39 drills and ANFO trucks.

Although not finalized the number of FELs supporting and backing up the shovels might be known.

Dan and Will Should Know the total number of miles of haul roads in phases 1 to 7.

The tonnage of ore, waste and leach material for all 7 phases should be known

The duration of each phase should be known

The hourly operating costs for Cat 793, P+H Shovels, and Support FELs should be known

Please enter this data in the spreadsheet below and e-mail me your spreadsheets with the information added.

Silver city Cash flow.xls

Assignment for the Week of Mar. 31 to April 4, 2008

Work for Tim

To be done for class on Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Review whether a fleet based on Cat 797's would be preferable to a fleet of Cat 793's.  Change your FPC program to give P+H shovels rather than the hydraulic excavators it currently substitutes on the basis of bucket size.

Design a fleet that can handle all yearly ore, waste, and leach material each year producing 160,000 tons per day of ore.  Using the requirement that the fleet must be able to move all the ore, waste and leach each year and looking for the lowest cost per ton moved as measured by FPC provide the optimum size fleet for phases 1 to 7.

You should be able to get the following information from curves you prepared for your capital costs as you extrapolated from the Western Mine Cost Service Models.

If your mill were 140,000 tons per day what % of the cost of a 160,000 tons per day mill would it be?

If your mill were 120,000 tons per day what % of the cost of a 160,000 tons per day mill would it be?

If your mill were 100,000 tons per day what % of the cost of a 160,000 tons per day mill would it be?

To be done for your presentation on Friday, April 4, 2008

Also assume the fleet mines the ore at 192,000 tons per day.  Under these conditions it will go through the phases faster than would be the case otherwise be the case and will handle more waste and leach material in any given year.  Use FPC to design an optimum fleet for phases 1 through 7

Will will supply you with stockpile rehandle costs for the mill on Wednesday.  Using the above information run MSVALP to see what cut off grades should be used over the life of the mine if

#1- The mine capacity is 192,000 tons per day of ore while the mill is 160,000 tons per day

#2- The mine capacity is 160,000 tons per day of ore while the mill is 160,000 tons per day

#3- The mine capacity is 160,000 tons per day of ore while the mill is 140,000 tons per day

#4- The mine capacity is 160,000 tons per day of ore while the mill is 120,000 tons per day

#5- The mine capacity is 160,000 tons per day of ore while the mill is 100,000 tons per day

Prepare to report the optimum mill and mine ore handling capacity and the truck and loader fleets that accompany that scenario.  Report the average hours for a truck and a loader each year under the scenario you chose.

Work for Will

For Wednesday.

Develop and explain how you would rehandle ore if there were a large low grade stockpile that would not be recovered till later in the life of the mining operation.  Report the cost per ton for pulling ore out of the stockpile by the method you designed.

In doing this it is likely you will be able to give the operating cost for a D11 and or some front end loader on an hourly operating cost basis.  The presentation below on estimating dozer operating costs may be helpful

Estimating Dozer Operating Costs.ppt

For your presentation on Friday be prepared to show the following

1- How do you estimate the operating cost per hour for a water truck.  Your power point should explain how to calculate those costs in a manner similar to the Estimating Dozer Operating Costs slideshow so that it may be a resource for future mining students.  Use the methodology to provide what is that cost for your mining operations

2- How do you estimate the operating cost per hour for a road grader.  Your power point presentation should again lay out the method so future mining students can use your presentation as a resource.  Use the methodology to provide what the hourly operating cost is for your mining operations.

3- Identify the hourly operating costs for dozers working at the mill, the leach pads, the dumps, the stockpiles, or leveling pads for the shovels

4- If you used Front end loaders in your low grade stockpile handling provide the hourly operating costs for those front end loaders.

Work for Dan.

For your Presentation Friday

1- Add the 3D haul roads to your 3D topography.  Break the haul roads into segments according to grades or other conditions and provide the modified profiles to Tim.

2- Design waste dumps for each phase of the mining operating.  Identify the tonnage of waste that will be dumped over the edge or used to build up lifts of waste.  The presentation below will show you how to obtain the volume for your various dump phases so you can plan them out to match the mining phases.

3- Identify what will happen to spent leach material and develop dumps for its final resting place.

The presentation below will indicate how you can do this work with the dumps.

Building Waste Dumps in MineSight.ppt

Assignment for the Week of Mar. 24 to Mar. 28, 2008

Team member 1 - Prepare the extended topographic region in 3 D both as topographic lines and as a 3 dimensional surface. 

Making Topo Lines 3D.ppt

Design the waste dump in phases that that match the pit phase volumes (ie- the phase 1 dump contains the waste removed from the phase 1 pit, the phase 2 dump adds the additional waste from the phase 2 pit etc).  Design haul roads from the pit top to the waste dump and the mill.  These waste dump and haul roads should be 3 dimensional features on your new 3D project map.

Team member 2- intersect the pit with the surface and create a surface that actually shows the shape of the land following mining of the various phase pits.  Create a detailed haul road profile coming out of the pit and put it into FPC.  This work should be done by the start of class on Wednesday.  Identify the capital and operating cost of road graders and water trucks for your pit haul roads and Team member 1's estimated haul road lengths.  Estimate the life of your road graders and haul trucks.  Plan the dozer operations at the waste dump and leach area.  Use Doz. Sim to estimate the number of dozers of what size you will use.  Estimate the capital and operating costs of those dozers and the life of the dozers.  Identify other places were dozers will be used.

Team member 3- Revise FPC estimates and determine the size of truck fleet that will be needed at different phases of the mining operation (ie the pit will be getting deeper).  Select a front end loader that can substitute for broken shovels or clean up spills.  Estimate its capital and operating cost.  Run MSVALP for your pit phases and provide an interpretation of the output as part of the Friday presentation.

Assignments for the Week of Mar. 3 to Mar. 7, 2008

Because of class pressures ahead of Spring break, students may choose to present their results either Friday before Spring break or the Monday following spring break.

Work to be done by All team members

Review all Capital and operating costs.  Are the Capital costs for the right size items (example is the mill a 160,000 ton per day mill).  Where did the Capital costs come from for different pieces of equipment?  Are they reliable sources?  How could you get better information.  Remember too that the relative size of an expense should influence how much effort you put into it.  (Your mill is a big expense item but since we are Mining Engineers, not metallurgists using your cost model from Western Mine Cost Service is acceptable).

Review your operating costs - how were they obtained?  You should include an operator for equipment that requires an operator.

Make sure your project workbook clearly outlines where and how your capital and operating costs were obtained.

Dan-the-Man

Create a new MineSight project that shows the topography around the pit area.  This will likely involve digitizing maps, getting a DXF file, and then importing it into MineSight as you did with your first project file, except this time you will have to digitize the map and create the DXF file instead of just import it.

With the map in place, next use MineSight's tools to build the waste dumps that will be required for the waste rock.  Also lay out your tailings.  Work with Tim to outline the route you will figure haul trucks will take and to estimate the distances.  As soon as you have maps you should be able to trace out approximate routes to where you will be putting dumps or mills.

(Feature to be added - how to build a waste dump using MineSight)

Will-he-Make-it

By Wednesday complete the pit bench and road plans for all phases of mining.  Create haulage profiles for all the roads out of the pit using the Cat Truck and Loader program.  Tim will use this information to get Truck Cycle time so you need to have this done by Wednesday.  After meeting your Wednesday deadlines to keep others on track, then trim your pit surfaces down to properly intersect the surface topoography.  Run the Pit-Res program in MineSight.  Map out the lengths of road that you will have to maintain.  Use 1 big road grader for every 6 miles of road (assuming 100% availability).   Estimate the number of road graders you will need and get their cost to both purchase and operate.  Assume a water truck for about every 4 miles.  Estimate the capital and operating cost to run the water trucks.  Work with Dan to estimate the number of dozers you will need using Caterpillar's Doz-Sim program.

(Feature to be added - how to run Doz-Sim)

(Feature to be added - how to run Pit-Res)

Tim does Moore

Run MSVALP to get initial estimates of the ore and waste that will be handled each year.  Set-up the sizing of the truck and loader fleet.  Using distance information which should be to you by the start of class Wednesday use the Cat Truck Program and Dr. Paul spreadsheet to estimate the size of the truck and loader fleet you will need to have the capacity for your ore and waste movements during different phases of the mine life.  (Because you will not have the exact haulage profile for the trucks outside the pit you will have later refinements in the truck cycle time).

Using Caterpillar's Fleet Production Cost Program FPC.ppt

Where We Will Try to Go Next

Because road graders and water trucks are an essential component of truck haulage the costs of these services will be broken up as cost per truck trip supported.  With cycle times and operating costs known we can get the load and haul cost for material going to the mill, leach pad or waste dump.  Since trucks and loaders are used up in proportion to their work we can get equipment life and distribute the capital cost of equipment over the mining operation.  Dozer support operations should be planned out for waste dumps and pad areas.  This will provide at end of line costs for handling dump and leach material.  Together with blasting costs we should then be able to get direct mining costs for ore, waste, and leach pad ore.  These numbers are unlikely to be the same.  We will now be able to replace mining cost estimates we initially put into our models with numbers generated for our actual mining conditions. 

We will know our fleet sizes and be able to start running Strategic Planner.  We will also lay out a capital cost schedule that shows replacement of equipment as it wears out.

Assignments for the Weeks of Feb. 18 to Feb. 29, 2008

Because of SME and the high participation by our students, no class will be held Friday and no presentations will be due till the following Friday.  This will also provide a little time to catch everything up.

Person #1 Task - You will need to put in benches and roads for the phases of pit expansion developed previously.  The following slides provide an overview of the Pit Expansion Tool and how it may be used for this task.

Using the Pit Expansion Tool to Add Benches.ppt

You will need to get a finished pit surface and merge that surface with the land surfaces that are not disturbed.

Person #2 Task - The tonnages for ore, pad leach and dump leach material is now known.  You must decide where there are practical places to put all of the facilities you need.  This will likely require you to find topo information beyond the boarders currently covered by the project and to create project files covering those areas.  You will need to figure out road routes from the edge of the pit to the needed facilities.  With this information you will be in a position to get haul distances approximated for ore, pad leach and waste material.  You will be able to estimate your cycle times.  With the cycle time estimated you will be able to check the sizes of your truck and loader fleet and determine if there are differences in cost for handling the ore, pad leach or waste material based simply on haulage distances and times.

Lastly person #2 needs to identify and cost out the support equipment that will be needed for the load and haul operation.  This includes such things as water trucks and road graders for the haul roads, FELs to clean-up spills in the loading areas, and dozers to work on dumps, road maintenance, pad leveling for equipment, and moving the large cables that are needed to run cable shovels.  Other support operations may be identified as this task proceeds.

Person #3 Task - Develop a list of all known capital costs.  Put those capital costs into a spread sheet showing costs over time.  Remember to include equipment replacement when it is due.  Also put in estimated operating costs each year.  Examine the screens of MSVALP to see what information you need to run it.  Assemble the best estimates that you can and attempt to run MSVALP.  The following slide files may be helpful in understanding what you are doing and how to run MSVALP

Cut-Off Grade and Optimization.ppt

Production and Cut-Off Grade Schedules with MSValp.ppt

Assignments for the Week of Feb. 11 to Feb. 15, 2008

The major tasks for this week are putting the roads and benches in your stage pits and doing key cost estimating.

Person #1 task - Put the haul roads and benches in your stage pits, completing 5 of the stage pits by Wednesday at 11:00 AM.  Given our most recent reserve sized in the ultimate pit and the instruction that you should have stage pits every 3 years it is likely that you will have 10 to 11 stage pits (including the ultimate pit).  Start with the first and smallest pit and work your sequence back to the ultimate pit.  This way the development of your roads will likely make sense and advance systematically.  (It will probably also start work on the easiest pits to work with).  You will need to complete the work by Friday at 11:00 to give the oral presentation.  The link below is to slides that should give you ideas about how to use the MineSight(R) pit expansion tool and create surfaces of your mine stage pits.

Adding Roads and Benches To A Pit Design.ppt

(Note this presentation may be updated or added to as questions arrise during the week).

There was also question on how to use the Multp option in MSOPIT for designing the stage pit needed for the road building task.  (yes your running a little behind).  This slide presentation may help with this task.

Using The Multp Option in MSOPIT for Mine Sequencing.ppt

Person #2 task - By Wednesday at 11:00AM estimate the capital cost per unit for your trucks and shovels that are planned for use in the pit.  Western Mine Cost Service has typical costs for many size mining trucks and shovels.  This would be a good place to start your search.  Since you are using very large trucks and loaders you may need to call the vendor to get a typical per unit cost.

Also you need to estimate the Capital Cost of your mill.  A good place to start would be to see if Western Mine Cost Service included a capital cost in any of their cost models that you used to estimate your operating costs.  If that fails you may have to do an approximate circuit layout and use the U.S. Bureau of Mines Cost Estimation system.  If you use this source you will need to update your costs for inflations.

Finally you should list the cost items you will need for your mine infrastructure (things like guard houses, wash houses, warehouses, support equipment etc).  All these tasks should be completed by Wednesday at 11:00 AM.

During the second half of the week you should determine the length and grade of all haul roads in the first 5 pits that have been laid out by person #1.  You should plan where you will put any mills, leach areas, and waste dumps and estimate the distance to get from the edge of the pit to those locations.  This will give you an approximate haulage routine, length, and grade.  Use this information and estimate the cycle time for all your trucks.  Use this estimated haul time to size your truck and loader fleet (estimates to this point are based only on a guess at what your cycle time will be).  When you have the estimated cycle times, calculate the capital cost of your truck and loader fleet (you already have your per unit cost from the first of the week).  Also estimate your operating cost for direct loading and hauling of ore and waste (which may very well differ).  Be prepared to present your results orally in class on Friday.

Person #3 task - By Wednesday at 11:00 AM lay out the design of your production blasts.  It is suggested that you use Konya's method which also has design spreadsheets available from the Surface Mining Course.  With your blast design in place you should be able to estimate your powder and primer cost.  You will also know the footage you must drill which should give you a good idea of what drill equipment you should select.

With you drill selected you should now be able to estimate your drilling rate.  With a drilling rate you should be able to estimate how many drills you will need.  With this information estimate the capital cost for your drill fleet (which may include powder trucks).  Western Mine Cost service contains costs for drills by size which should help you complete this task.  Also go through and calculate the operating cost for your drill and blast system (you were taught how to do this in Surface Mining and you can review your notes here if you need refreshing).  Finally list support equipment that you will need for your operation.  Be prepared to present your work orally on Friday.

Assignments for the Week of Feb. 4 to Feb. 8, 2008

The major tasks for this week are to find the ultimate pit and then develop a schedule of stage pits leading to the ultimate pit.

Person #1 task - Use your best current estimates of the mill ore tonnage and mining rate to get costs for mining and milling operations.

Calculate your ultimate pit slope.  Assume that the toe to crest slope is 70 degrees.  Assume that a catch berm will be 20 feet wide.  Assume that the rock does not limit pit slope.  Assume your haul road must be at least 3 times the width of your truck.  Get an estimated pit slope.

Use Learch Grossman in MineSight Economic Planner to calculate your first draft open pit.

Use MSData Analyst to evaluate the grade and tonnage of the minable ore in the pit.  MS Economic Planner should give ore, leach, and waste tonnages and average grades.

Your first draft ultimate pit should provide an idea of what the minable tonnage and mine life will be.  This may change the proposed mine size and production rate and thus the costs.  You will also know how large the pit is which may provide a better idea of how many loops the haul road will make to get out, which in turn may change your over-all ultimate pit assumptions.  Also as you know the depth and distance of your pit you may calculate how much the cost of mining increases due to increasing haulage distances as the pit depth increases.  This will enable you to add a factor for increasing costs with depth.

Take these revisions and re-run your ultimate pit with the added and refined considerations in place.

You will likely find the series of slides below to be helpful in running MineSight Economic Planner to get an Ultimate Pit.

Creating A Grided Surface Model.ppt

Coding A Block Model With Rock% Using MineSight Compass.ppt

(note - the above slides on using compass to code the model is an alternative to the procedure shown in other slides using an upper and lower surface)

Before running your ultimate pit you need to create a specialized surface file.  The procedure for doing this is outlined in the following slide series

Creating A Specialized Surface File.ppt

Finding the Ultimate Pit.ppt  Note these slides have been modified to show the things you should check on before attempting to run MSOPIT

(Additional Note - My ultimate pit created slightly differently than your contains over 1 billion tons of mill ore - we may want to compare notes)

Appraising Minable Resources.ppt

Persons #2 and #3

Be sure that you have adjusted your equipment fleet, costs, and bench heights to reflect the production rate you are planning.  You will need to have a working slope.  Your toe to crest slopes will be limited to 70 degrees.  You will need to accommodate roadways out of the pit.  These roads will need to be 3 truck widths wide.  Your benches will have to be wide enough to accommodate your loading equipment and truck the the loading configuration you have chosen.  Pay attention to truck turning radiuses and the clearance needed for your shovel to swing to load your truck.  Leave a safe distance from the edge of your truck tire to the crest of the bench (you will have to have a safety berm there anyway).  Draw out your loading arrangement and figure how wide a working bench will have to be.

Not every bench will have to be a working bench.  You have guesses on your equipment and how much equipment you will have running.  This probably gives you an idea of how many shovels must be running.  Most mines will have an additional shovel or two in place since a shovel move is a major issue and takes considerable time.  This should give you an idea how many working benches you will need.

Now consider how wide a non-working bench needs to be.  At the very least a non-working bench must act as a catch bench for falling rock.  For this project 20 feet has been set as that minimum width.  In all likelihood you will find it tough to get a shovel in and start loading a truck on a 20 foot wide bench so your inactive benches will probably need some additional space.  Sketch out your configuration and measurements for your inactive benches

Now use your room required for your road and the active and inactive mining benches to calculate your over-all pit slope which you will need to do your MSOPIT runs in MineSight(R).

From the second generation design of your ultimate pit done by person #1 you should know what your mining costs and production rates are going to be.  You should also know how much you expect your costs to increase as you get deeper (due to longer haulage distances).  You will use this information to run MSOPIT to get the stage pits.  Your planned mine life will be on the order of about 25 years.  You should develop stage pits for every 3 years.  You should also identify the grade and tonnage in each 3 year phase.  Assuming the files for the ultimate pit have been prepared already the following slide series should give you an idea how to get those stage pits.

Sequencing Mining Operations with MineSight.ppt

Warning - You were using 32.4 meters as the turning radius.  Consider this to be the diameter of a full turn circle.  Thus the radius is 1/2 of 32.4 meters.

Also testing work with the Multp option in MSOPIT indicates that when working stage pits have a smaller slope than the final pit (which yours will) that the Multp option will mine outside the final pit.  I am working with Mintec on a fix for this but you should do your stage pits with L.G. and then if you need intermediate pits because of a "gap" problem, consider using a floating cone confined between two LG pit surfaces.

Assignments for the Week of Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, 2008

Development of a Mining Project is a constant process of refining, adding detail to designs and cross-checking earlier assumptions.  As drill hole data a geologic interpretations become available it is common to use drawings a cross-sections to understand the orebody and estimate the tonnage of ore that might be found.

Last week you began displaying your drill hole data.  This week you will prepare geologic cross sections of your ore body and estimate the amount of mill grade ore that you have.  The following slides presentation will be helpful to that task.

Preliminary Ore Quantities and Grade Shells.ppt

(this presentation now shows how to do both average end area and a grade shell)

How To Create A Gridset In MineSight®.ppt

You should note that since you have determined to run a Cu, Mo coproduct mill that your ore break even cut-off grade should be based on equivalent copper.  The following presentation may help you prepare your equivalent grades.

How to Calculate an Equivalent Grade Item.ppt

You will now be in a position to cross-check your original production rate assumptions and costs.  Check and adjust those assumptions and prepare in your project journal new estimates of the tonnage, costs and cut-offs based on your new found information.

Now assume that the process of planning your project has advanced.  Studies have come in that will allow you to interpolate your drill hole data and develop a block model of your ore reserve.  You will now prepare the specialized surface files and block model files and will interpolate grades into your block model.  Today Kriging is the state of the art however for this project you will use Inverse Distance Squared with drill holes up to 250 meters away and requiring at least two drill holes to interpolate a block.  In practice the distance to interpolate a drill hole would be developed from studying drill hole correlations as a function of distance.  Please note that since your mill ore is based on coproducts and your leaching is based only on copper you will have to interpolate for both copper, moly, and equivalent copper.  The following slide shows will likely help you with the tasks you will face.

Creating Limiting Surfaces For A Block Model.ppt

Initializing Files For A Block Model.ppt

Creating the Block Model.ppt

How Do I Clone a File 15.ppt

When your block model is complete you will use MSdata analyst and grade shells to try to determine the amount and grade of ore that you have and the grade tonnage relationship.  The following slide presentation may help you get the required information.

Obtaining Information From the Geologic Block Model.ppt

Examining the Block Model for Information.ppt

Additional presentations will be added based on problems encountered in your work.

When you complete the block model, estimate the amount of millable and leachable ore that you will have.  Go through you cost and production rate assumptions again and make adjustments as warranted by your data.  Keep a record of your decisions and rationale in your project journal.

Possible Help on Copper Moly Prices  (my search results - note that source sites are given)

Copper and Moly Price Data.doc

you may also want to use the links to USGS data (not all Prices are inflation adusted)

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/copper/240798.pdf

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/molybdenum/470798.pdf

Assignments for the Week of Jan. 21 to Jan. 25 will be.

0- Make an initial estimate of your bench height considering equipment that you might likely use.  You will need this bench height as you begin work in MineSight(R)

When you start you should use the following limits for your project control file (MineSight(R) will ask you to create the file when you start your project).

Easting  Minimum 1000  Maximum 4000

Northing Minimum 4000  Maximum 6500

Elevation  Minimum 2000  Maximum about 2960*

* The difference between the maximum and minimum must be evenly divisible by your bench height

Cell size  Easting and Northing  Probably something in the 10 to 20 range  (10 will create a model 4 times as large as 20)

Cell size Elevation  - enter the number that matches your bench height

Units -  Metric