Category Tech talk

This week’s 30 Seconds of Info comes from Ian Glacken – Director of Geology. Grabbing samples from ore passes:  Deriving grades from underground ore passes, especially in precious metal mines, is a hit-and-miss activity at best, and may give a…

This week’s 30 Seconds Of Info comes from Ian Glacken – Director of Geology:  iglacken@snowdenoptiro.com Reconciliation best practice:  No subjectivity; a robust industrial-strength database at the heart of the system; no spreadsheets for mission-critical data; charts and colours make understanding…

  Always evaluate the cause of any Certified Reference Material (CRM) assay result outside of the certified three standard deviation grade range:  Statistically, less than three in each 1,000 results should be outside this range, making this protocol a useful…

  Don’t ignore moisture in reconciliation!  Although much of Australia is dry we do have wet spells, and any mine in the tropics or in the northern hemisphere is going to have to cope with water to a greater or…

Field duplicate samples obtained from waste materials add little value to the analysis of sample precision, particularly in precious metal deposits:  Sampling protocols often dictate the collection of field duplicate samples at a fixed rate relative to the number of…

Employ a minimum of four Certified Reference Materials (CRM’s or Standards) at any one time:  A typical protocol is to insert CRMs that allow assay accuracy to be monitored at grades equivalent to the anticipated (or known) break-even cut-off grade,…

Accounting for development volumes underground:  Unless development is strictly on lines and the ore is either much wider or much narrower than the development face, the drives may meander and stripping cuts may need to be taken to straighten up…

This week's 30 Seconds of Info is from Ian Glacken - Optiro Director of Geology and Principal Geology Consultant. Try to formalise the confidence in your resource categories: at least for a given deposit and/or commodity, try to communicate to all of the stakeholders what error (plus or minus, in metal terms) is meant by Measured, Indicated or Inferred Resources.

This week’s 30 Seconds of Info is from Ian Glacken our Director of Geology. Process mapping is the key to reconciliation: The heart of a robust reconciliation system is understanding your current process flow, in terms of measurement points, stockpiles,…