BlastGyro

The BlastGyro™ is a unique survey system designed for efficient surveying of production blastholes. At the heart of the system is the world's smallest survey gyro - the SlimGyro™ - and its light weight and compact running gear. The length of the mounted gyro and running gear is 138 cm, with an outer diameter of only 26 mm and a total tool string weight of 4.5 kg.

Download the BlastGyro overview.

The light weight and compact size of the system makes it safe and easy to manually run in and out of blastholes using a feeder reel fitted with 50 meters of 11 mm fiberglass rod. The BlastGyro™ can survey at all angles and the fiberglass rod assures it can be moved up, down and horizontally.

To be able to adapt to varying blasthole diameters the running gear can be fitted with KwikZip plastic centralizer blades. These plastic blades have different lengths and can be combined to cover a range of hole diameters. These plastic centralizers do not get sharp edges after repeated, further improving the safety of the system.

The system is operated using Surveyor™, Inertial Sensing's gyro field survey software. This has functions specially designed to make it easy to plan, conduct, process, reprocess and export blast ring surveys.

The software that is used to operate the BlastGyro™ in the field is called Surveyor™. This is the same software used for all type of Inertial Sensing gyro survey tools. To make it easy to survey a large series of holes in blasthole ring, Surveyor™ has a dedicated "BlastGyro Mode". One or more survey plans can be prepared with reference coordinates and directions at the office before going on location to survey. Once on location the operator can load the planned group of surveys with pre-set blast ring ID, hole IDs with associated start coordinates and reference angles. This mode of operation removes most of the data entry operations when starting each survey and makes repetitive surveying of a blast ring or vertical section very efficient and error-free.

Already processed survey data can be updated by opening the data in the Surveyor™ processing interface. The updated plan, with revised collar reference coordinates, is easy to load and a batch reprocess of all surveys can be accomplished with one button click. Surveys can be automatically exported into data formats such as: Excel, CSV, DXF and Surpac.

SlimGyro™ This is the BlastGyro™ survey instrument and field computer. The gyro kit comes complete with survey instrument, two rechargeable batteries, a gyro battery charger, operator manual, Surveyor™ field software and isAnalysis™ data analysis software. There are no license fees associated with the software and updates are free of charge. The computer is a Windows-based tablet supplied with a high capacity battery, standard power outlet charger and car charger.

GyroMax Feeder Reel™ The feeder reel is a manual system designed to make it possible to run the SlimGyro™ into and out of the hole. This works for all inclinations whether inclined, horizontal or vertical (up and down). The standard length of the reel rod is 50 meters, but it is possible to fit the reel with rod lengths of up to 100 meters. The reel is fitted with a pole mount for the field computer.

Running Gear This is the standard running gear (protective pressure barrel system) which is used to run the gyro in the hole. The running gear comes with bottom shock absorber (bottom lander), top hanger, swivel and v-stands.

Centralizers The centralizer blades are made of plastic and two blades are mounted on each end of the pressure barrel. The blades are available in 4 arc sizes: 10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm and 40 mm. To calculate the required size, simply double the arc size and add 26 mm (the running gear diameter). For example, the 10 mm arc size will be good for 46 mm ID holes and 40 mm arc will fit a hole of 106 mm as a rough guide. The blades are simply mounted using duct tape (silver tape) and can be set tighter or looser to make sure the fit to the hole diameter is correct. It is important to review the necessary hole diameters before ordering. The blades wear down with use and are a consumable item but the operator will still get a lot of repeat use out of them. Depending on how they are used and ground conditions they can last anywhere from a day to several weeks. Most importantly the blades do not get sharp edges from repeated surveying (as is the case for metallic blade centralizers) which is important from a safety perspective for a manually operated system.