Epiroc’s Pit Viper blasthole drill was a game changer in mining in terms of flexibility, power, efficiency and safety. The rig has now been in the market for 25 years and remains the market leader. Not only that, but for the past 10 years, they have also been running autonomously – in that decade the depth accuracy of the drilled holes has increased by an average of 85%, leading to more than 8 million wasted overdrill metres being avoided. The spatial accuracy of the drilled holes has increased by an average of 60%. More than 90 million metres have been drilled autonomously and the average utilisation of a Pit Viper rig in autonomous mode is 17% higher than in manual mode. They have also had a big environmental impact as around 85 million litres of fuel have been saved, and CO2 emissions have been reduced by around 225,000 t. Autonomous Pit Viper rigs have also enhanced safety by operating unmanned, and with the Automatic Bit Changer (ABC), safety is further elevated. Since the launch of the ABC in 2022, more than 7,000 tricone bits have been replaced automatically. To mark this major milestone, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore talked in-depth to Vice President Marketing, Epiroc Surface division, Dustin Penn, who has been involved with the Pit Viper since its inception.
Dustin Penn, Vice President Marketing, Epiroc Surface division
Q Can you give some background to the Pit Viper project in the context of the market for blasthole drill rig market at the time?Â
Back in the Ingersoll Rand days, so pre-2004, we didn’t have much of a presence in the large open pit mines. We had some large range drills out there like the DMH, DM-M3 and DM-M2 plus the DM45 and DM50 for smaller hole sizes, but a lot of the market was using large electric P&H and Bucyrus drills. Our goal was to get into the Minnesota Iron Range and Arizona copper mines in the US and then of course into global markets like Chile and Peru copper. We had an experienced group made up of product managers, design engineers and service engineers – so we set out to design the blasthole drill that the market wanted but didn’t know they needed – and sent the team out to meet with customers to find out exactly what they wanted to see. And it was clear those older large electric models had a lot of pain points – of course you still needed live power if you wanted to move the machine from bench to bench but also you had to bring down the tower – and that included managing the rack rods plus bringing the head down to the bottom of the tower before lowering the tower – it took a full shift just to lower the tower plus you needed a cable crew to move all the cables around during the move as well. So we designed the biggest, most powerful diesel single pass blasthole drill in the market with the biggest air compressor on the in the market – it was a twin, Ingersoll Rand compressor producing 3,800 CFM. We combined that with a powerful Cummins QSK45 engine and big, powerful pumps plus an excavator style robust, heavy undercarriage. All this meant that it could tram long distances at an excavator type speed which was a step change for the industry. Â
Q Were there also challenges and stumbling blocks?Â
Of course there were challenges, as everything was new. A major challenge was that we had to come up with a new control system, and we partnered with Aquila at the time, which went on to be acquired by Caterpillar – but we worked with them to build a computer control system linked to high precision GPS. Given the new rig’s mobility, we had to be able to provide a hole navigation solution with computer on board and distributed control system. It was really a new age for large drills. By the time the then Atlas Copco acquired Ingersoll Rand’s Drilling Solutions business in 2004 we had built six Pit Viper PV351s and had also come out with the new PV270/PV271 which we launched at MINExpo 2004.Â
Q What impact did Atlas Copco coming on board have when they bought Ingersoll Rand Drilling Solutions? Â
It was very significant – first off they already had the Rig Control System (RCS) for their underground and surface crawler drills – which was already running on over 900 machines so that computer system brought a lot of capability and confidence in performance as they had already worked out any bugs and had proven RCS in the market. So  applying their hardware and software, and of course experience of systems to our application. To give you an idea of the progress we made in only a matter of years – the first rig that we gave to Morenci in early 2000 took us almost a year to hand over to production. The first Pit Viper PV270 that we gave to Freeport Safford was handed over in two weeks. And of course Ingersoll Rand had not been committed to the drilling business in terms of new investment for some time – Atlas Copco, which later became Epiroc, built on what we had achieved and continued investment into the product, which allowed us to quickly fix some of the issues that we had had. In a wider sense, Atlas Copco wanted to be a leader in the mining industry and in many ways it was their opportunity to grow in the surface mining sector – and they went on as Epiroc to become the blasthole drill market leader. Obviously, they already had a lot of the experience in the underground sector and surface quarrying sector, but not as much exposure to the really large open pit mines, both from the installed base and the parts and services side. They were able to grow the large drill market so quickly not just because of the drill itself but also due to the fact that we had a lot of coverage throughout the world with directly owned companies and customer centres with multiple branches. But Atlas Copco and later Epiroc also made a difference with all the ideas that came from their factory and operations teams on ways we could increase the number of rigs that we were producing in Garland. Plus, they involved us closely and asked us what would it take to increase the throughput then put in place the investment in things like expanded bays, so we could build more of these these drills. Another change was that in the early days we had to rent generators to power the electric drills for testing which was was very expensive. Under Atlas Copco we brought more power into the facility to allow us to test the big electric PV351s. We also added a lot of new concrete space and lots of gantry cranes as crane capacity had been a major bottleneck. Then we built a new assembly flow line for the PV270/PV271. So as sales volumes increased, we were able to keep up. Plus we were able to keep supplying our DML and DM45 models that had been our big volume models up to that point.
The acquisition by Atlas Copco – later to become Epiroc – had a huge impact on the Pit Viper’s evolution and market growth
Q And what was the market impact like – how quickly did the Pit Viper start to embed with customers? Where there any stand out markets or moments?Â
It was not immediate, as there is always mining industry conservatism, but once we were able to run comparisons on performance with traditional large electric rigs running side by side with the new Pit Viper, the impact was huge. There were numerous examples where we would drill the pattern, lower the tower down and tram to the next pattern and start drilling again on that next pattern before the other drill would either complete its pattern or be able to lower the tower. In many cases, the cable crew could only work during the day, so we could do move the drill during the night shift and it’d be up ready to work on the next pattern the next morning. And working closely with customers during real drilling operations we also experienced several ways that could gain productivity out of the Pit Viper, as when traditional mine planning would fall down, its flexibility provided the performance. Our big game changing moment I would say was growing along with the WA Pilbara iron ore market – as the major miners there were doing their big expansions and changing from contract mining to owner operator, we were there with the Pit Viper – I was in Australia at that point and we put up over 100 rigs in in a very short period of time – we did 45 in one year, which is a staggering number of large drills in one commodity and one country.Â
Q How did the autonomy side of things evolve and what would you say are some of the big achievements there?Â
At that time, everyone was looking to autonomy’s potential in mining across the board. With the Atlas Copco investment we were also able to leverage the experience in automation that they had and that worked for us – we didn’t want to start from scratch, so we took what had been very successful underground with RCS to the surface and adapted it. A lot of the core applications, software and code were able to be reused. We demonstrated an early version of the full autonomous suite after MINExpo in 2008. We ran several trials at customer sites including Boliden Aitik in Sweden and Barrick Goldstrike in the US. These were running using semi autonomous line of sight with teleoperation from a van or container– and this formed the basis of the technology that later evolved to full autonomy. It put in place the required structures and robustness of the equipment which allowed us to upgrade the RCS where it became a truly smart rig. And because it was built up from the base platform, as time has gone on it has meant we can offer a lot of retrofit upgrades to drills even with 50,000 hours, bringing increased performance through our new software. Sometimes it has required both hardware and software updates, but the customer can get more value or increased value out of their existing products. What we have achieved with autonomy is remarkable – we now have hundreds of fully autonomous drills after only 10 years, having started with only a few rigs at BHP Yandi being monitored from their IROC in Perth over 1,000 kilometres away; and from the success of that it expanded across their fleet. We took the learnings from that and really tried to scale our autonomy-related resources and competence all around the around the world, using boot camps where we’d bring people in for two weeks at a time and immerse them in our technology – not only the automation packages themselves but also demonstrating the value of the data and how to utilise that data, such as translating it into quantifiable impacts that automation is having on the operation. Pit Viper drill autonomy has now been around for long enough that some of the early fleets that we installed are now starting to turn over and customers are coming back to the to Pit Vipers because they’ve been very successful to date plus today they are able to now enhance their existing drill or invest in a new drill with our latest features and improvements. We lifted the bar from a standard drill to an automated drill to a full pattern autonomous drill. Today full autonomy is common – we have more than 35 sites operating around the world, all with multiple machines.
Today many customers are going straight to full drill autonomy with Pit Vipers
Q What about the electric version of the new Pit Viper – was that difficult to develop and how did it compare to traditional electric drills? What about the efficiency of the drilling itself?Â
It was relatively simple thanks to the modularity of the Pit Viper design. We changed the diesel engine to an electric motor and got rid of the radiator for the engine and swapped the fuel tanks for water tanks to have more water capacity. And even when we put those drills side by side with competitor drills, they outperformed those drills just as the diesel version had, helped also by the cable feed system that we had developed. And to your other question, it is important to point out that we made a lot of improvements in the drilling performance as well to the Pit Viper. By that I mean a consistent pull down with the correct amount of weight on the bit to have the carbides penetrate the rock at the at the appropriate level. Plus the right rotation torque on the head to allow it to spin itself to the next clean rock location along with getting the air right to get all of the cuttings out of the hole. So we were maximising drilling time versus tramming or levelling. But we were also drilling better, so all of those things combined allowed both the diesel and the electric version to be more productive than what was already out there. We also introduced a smart adaptive drilling algorithm for our Autodrill, that maximises productivity based on the rock conditions but also ensure the highest quality cleaning to ensure that holes stand up for blasting.Â
Q How has the autonomy market changed in terms of deployment? Plus how has Epiroc managed to keep its high market share in both the Pit Vipers themselves and in the autonomous drilling space?
Originally, many customers started their journey with two or three drills, often initially in teleremote. A lot of operating parameters needed to be changed along with the mindset, such as how to cordon and clear benches, and how people can interact with autonomous machines. But the processes are now so well understood that many customers today go straight to full autonomy on multiple units. And this fundamental change in understanding what autonomy involves has also helped increase the adoption rate. In answer to your market share retention question, I think an important point is that we’ve been consistent with having a roadmap from the beginning that we have stuck to – and a crucial part of that was future proofing RCS along the way with new features and improvements. This means taking a very forward looking perspective in terms of software and a hardware perspective and making small increments or baseline changes that will have a long term impact. So its about agility combined with flexibility, as well as working closely with our customers on what they want and what they would like to see. Creating interfaces that allow the drills to be interoperable has also been important, along with understanding that the rig is on the front line in terms of identifying changes in rock conditions and then transferring that data and information for use in areas like blasting and sampling. So the Pit Viper is an important tool in the interconnected mine. While some competitors have adopted similar features in their latest machines, we remain committed to working closely with our customers – some of whom we have partnered with for over 25 years – and continue to invest in new solutions to meet their evolving needs and maximise drill performance.Â
The introduction of the Automatic Bit Changer was another major step forward
Q Looking at future powertrains, where are things going in terms of battery or hybrid rigs – plus you have already shown off cabless prototypes – do you see that having potential yet?Â
As you know, cable-powered drills are already widely used and are becoming more common in metallic mines as they put in more electrical infrastructure as customers look to reduce their Scope 1 emissions beyond just the truck fleets. But at the same time, a lot of customers wanting electric Pit Vipers aren’t necessarily deploying them because they want the same productivity levels. The drill itself is just as productive but operationally in large drill patterns you still won’t get the same numbers as diesel drills due to the cable management. Plus you aren’t today going to get a a battery big enough to drill these large diameter holes for an extended period – this is why battery use has to date been focused on reducing emissions while tramming on crawler rigs but retaining the diesel engine for drilling. So it’s still a balancing act. That said hybrid power solutions for Pit Vipers are actively being worked on – I can’t say more than that. But a lot of projects that are that are on the roadmap are getting investment because Epiroc is committed to sustainable mining – so it is a big focus for the company R&D spend. On the cab question, it’s kind of a fall-back to still have a cab on the machine, but the majority of our customers with autonomous operations never or rarely actually put people in the in the cab. It was more about when you needed to swap out rods or change bits that you have someone in the cab on the joysticks. What it has done is remove the need for us to include ROPS/FOPS cabs on autonomous drills which is a weight saving. As you say we did show a cabless Pit Viper at MINExpo  – the PV-275 CA – back in 2016, so now almost ten years ago we were ahead of our time. So its something we have available when customers want to take that step. The introduction of the Automatic Bit Changer on the Pit Viper creates a larger opportunity to remove the cabin as that can all now be done remotely from an office environment.Â
LinkOA for Drills integrates mixed autonomous and non autonomous drill fleets, even of different brands, into a cohesive system
Q Is there more integration now between the Pit Viper and other drill product lines and teams?Â
The two business lines, which includes the Pit Vipers and SmartROC crawler drills like the D65 are now under one surface division and have been for some time. And yes, that has allowed us to share more experience and knowledge as well as develop a shared approach to strategy and product development. Customers have also come to realise the benefits of both. We now have autonomous D65s operating with Fortescue, for example in the Pilbara. In the US, at Luck Stone, we’re able to leverage all the experience that we’ve had with ten years of autonomous Pit Vipers to the D65 platform. It has become relatively easy for operators or controllers of Pit Vipers to operate the D65 thanks for our Common Automation Platform and a shared training approach. And our progress going beyond drilling in automation – acquiring ASI Mining has brought us the former Mobius command and control platform, now known as LinkOA, which allows us to manage both autonomous haulage and autonomous drills through one interface. LinkOA for Drills integrates the drill fleet into a cohesive system and is also designed to adapt to various mine setups, supporting compatibility with different autonomous equipment – and that includes other drill brands. Its straightforward interface ensures ease of use for daily operations and long-term planning, while autonomous capabilities enhance the precision and consistency of drilling tasks.
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