Option B, however, was going to take eight months to arrive. Rose’s Yilgarn Drill & Blast opted for an Atlas Copco ROC D9C SmartRig. He is the first to admit it’s probably the best decision he’s ever made.
 “We were in the market for a new rig [but] didn’t know much about the SmartRig. [Atlas Copco’s] Craig Marsh was saying they had about 100 of them working in Sweden and they were having a great run out of them. We’ve got two other Atlas Copco drills, but they’re 20 years older than this one. So we thought we’d give it a go – keep up with the modern technology – and it’s paid off.”
Conditions in the Pilbara were a little bit different to Sweden? “They are,” Rose said. “That was one of our concerns. But its performance has been remarkable.”
 
Working as a sub-contractor at the Rio Tinto owned Hope Downs iron ore mine in the Pilbara, Yilgarn has not gone easy on the D9C. Apart from drilling through the heat of a Pilbara summer, the rig is being used on steep hillsides to drill 115mm-diameter blast-holes of 3-13m depth.

“It did about 300 impact hours and about 22,000 lineal metres, which was fantastic.”

“Contour work it’s called,” Rose said.

“It involves working on the edge of a hill. So we start at the bottom on, say, 3m holes and go up to 13m holes as it takes the wedge out. It’s pretty steep and exciting work, to say the least. Thankfully, the rig is ideal for it.”

Rose said he has been genuinely surprised by aspects of the SmartRig’s performance, including consumable life, the ease of trouble shooting, the machine’s versatility and the smoothness when drilling.

“It does vary a bit, but normally you might get around 4,000m-5,000m out of a shank. We got 22,000 lineal metres out of the first one!

“There have been times in really good ground where I’ve got a long life out of a shank, but it’s pretty rare to get a run like that. Normally too you’d get a good run doing single-pass holes, as you’re not breaking the threads out. But we’re doing 13m holes and breaking 3-4 rods out.

“We’ve also been getting excellent drill rod life.”

Availability of the D9C had been running at about 95% each month while working around the clock. Atlas Copco SmartRigs have built-in logging and monitoring functions, together with support for diagnostics and faultfinding.

Rose does his own maintenance and repairs and sees the ROC D9C’s advanced onboard monitoring and diagnostic system as a winner.

“We’ve had probably 4-5 problems come up so far and it’s taken me on average about 15-20 minutes to diagnose it,” he said.

“And the next day we’ve got the part and it’s up and going, which is pretty good, especially being out in the bush. It’s a very easy system to use, as it pretty much tells you where the fault is.

“There haven’t been any overheating issues,” Rose said, attributing the Swedish-built rig’s adaptability to the harsh Australian summer partly to the input of Atlas Copco’s Australian-based technical support personnel. “I think they have had a lot to do with the design of the rigs to come from Europe to Australia. This D9C has certainly made the difference for us.”