New Maptek Sentry to watch over your mine

Let’s face it, mining is an inherently dangerous and risky business. We know that incidents such as wall collapses do happen, but it is possible for them to be avoided by effective monitoring.

One of the reasons we’re here at AusRock 2014 is to meet with mine operators, technical support staff, geotech and mining engineers.

We’re here to learn about best practice in mining mechanics and ground control. Talk at the conference so far has focused on discovering methods to maximise the value of geotechnical data. Stability monitoring is also a hot topic with many attendees looking for ways to detect change at their mine site.

Maptek is presenting the new Sentry tracking solution.

Cost-effective, safe and versatile, Sentry is a laser scanner based screening tool for detecting and recording surface changes.

Sentry is cost effective. It can be used to alert staff when surface movements approach certain thresholds, saving the more expensive radar systems to conduct close monitoring when required.

Sentry is the right tool for detecting small movements over a long period of time to identify trends. The ideal setup would be to install and run Sentry to watch multiple areas, and deploy the radar systems in a targeted way.

Sentry is safe. Remote detection causes no interruption to mining activity. There’s no need for surveyors to access highwalls or unsafe benches to set out targets.

Laser-based systems are versatile. You can control Sentry from the field or the office. Watch scans in real time or set alerts for threshold notifications. Track multiple areas within an area of interest.

You can take the laser scanner off the post and use in static or mobile scanning mode for other survey tasks. Bring the 3D scan data back to the office and create surfaces, calculate volumes and conduct geotech analysis. One data capture session produces so many deliverables.

Sentry is a Maptek solution, so visualisation is top-notch. View a heat map overlaid with colour imagery to easily see where movement has occurred. Export a time lapse animation and share with management.

The consequences of a collapse or failure in the pit can be devastating. Can you afford to be without a Sentry watching over your mine?