Infill Drilling Plan Optimization

GeoMine-OreChaser (OreChaser, aka DPO) is an infill drilling plan optimizer for both open-pit and underground mines. OreChaser allows the drill planner to determine the optimum number, positions and lengths of additional drill holes required to maximize the resource uplift for a given drill budget spending. OreChaser features a proprietary 3D Genetic Algorithm with the choice of two search strategies: RocDP (Randomized Ore Chasing Drilling Plane) strategy and (FRD) Fully Random Drilling strategy, both with the objective of maximizing metal recovery while minimizing Kriging variances under the specified drilling budget.

Unlike most other competing drill hole optimizers which can only generate non-directional drillholes, the auto-generated infill drillholes in OreChaser can be either directional or non-directional with an optional fan-out configuration, and they can start either from a topographical surface (for Open-pit mines) or from mine accesses (for underground mines). Furthermore, OreChaser also provides a slew of options allowing the users to easily adapt and customize the underlying Generic Algorithm to suit their own specific data set.

OreChaser Key Benefits

Automated Planning：OreChaser eliminates the manual trial and error process
Fully Integrated: Available as OreChaser-OP (module for open-pits) and OreChaser-UG (module for underground mines) in the GeoMine platform
Highly Configurable：includes a large # of user-options
Easy-to-Use：features an integrated, non-blocking interface in an interactive WYSIWYG 3D modeling environment.

OreChaser Feature List

DrillHole sub-module

Import assays, attributes (categorical or continuous) and geological structures including faults; Desurvey drill holes with choices of 5 desurvey algorithms; Composite and color-code drill holes by lithology, attributes or assays; Create custom DDH attributes as input to subsequent block model interpolations; Create planned drill holes for drilling planning.

Compositing submodule

Creates composites from drill holes for use with OreChaser

Infill Drilling Plan Optimization

Given an existing block model, composites and resource classification criteria, determines N-best infill drilling plans each defining number, and positions and lengths of the required additional drill holes that maximizes resource uplift while minimizing Kriging variances under a given drill budget spending.

Choice of two search strategies: RocDP (Randomized Drilling Plane) strategy for targeted drilling and faster convergence, and FRD (Fully Random Drilling) strategy for exhaustive search.

Option for using a fan-out hole configuration.

OreChaser offers both open-pit and underground modules which are licensed separately. Drill holes can originate from a topography (for open-pit mines) or from mine accesses (for underground mines.