The diamond drill takes its name from the diamonds lining the contact end of the drill bit and has been around a surprisingly long time. There is evidence that the ancient Egyptians used diamonds as boring tools while building the pyramids, although the holes were very shallow.
The idea of using diamonds in a ring shape to drill holes was first conceived by Swiss engineer Jean Rudolphe Leschot while living in Paris in 1862. The advent of the industrial revolution brought with it a need to move a lot of rock to support the developing infrastructure, and the metal drills were simply not up to the task. Early drill bits were painstakingly crafted and the diamonds only lasted about 9 metres before they had to be turned and reset (today’s bits last hundreds of metres, sometimes even reaching a thousand metres).
The first drills were powered by men and were limited to blast hole drilling (small diameter shallow holes), but by 1864, just two years later, they were being coupled with steam driven machines. The rate of progress was rapid, and by 1867 the burgeoning industry had progressed from drilling mere centimetres in an hour to drilling a 229 metre hole (750 feet) at a rate of .60 metres (1 to 2 feet) per hour.
In the following years the whole supporting cast around the diamond drill head underwent vast improvements. Swivelling heads, hoists, double-tube core barrels and the hydraulic feed system were just some of the innovations introduced. It all came together within an amazingly short period of time to enable companies to explore the depths and discover the minerals that make investors rich and enable the manufacturing that makes our world go round.
What I’d like to do in the next posting is introduce you to the major components of the drill assembly so you can begin to understand the process. Hopefully as you join me in my learning experience we will both be in a better position to appreciate this business.
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