Orica release FRAGTrack Crusher

Company expands fragmentation monitoring solution with automated pre-crusher measurement tool

ORICA have today announced the release of their latest fragmentation-monitoring solution enabled by FRAGTrack Crusher, an automated pre-crusher fragmentation measurement tool that delivers operational continuity in a safe and reliable way.

Based on the success of the existing suite of automated post-blast fragmentation monitoring solutions, Orica have developed FRAGTrack Crusher to meet growing demand from customers for downstream monitoring and optimization solutions at every stage of the mining/quarrying value chain.

The technology leverages the latest deep neural network artificial intelligence (AI) framework along with industry-proven hybrid 2D and 3D particle size distribution (PSD) processing methods to deliver a fully autonomous adaptive fragmentation monitoring solution at the crusher dump hopper, allowing customers to measure material on the truck during the tipping operation.

FRAGTrack Crusher provides highly accurate truck-by-truck PSD analysis of rock fragments during the dumping operation without impacting operations or productivity. The technology delivers constant performance tracking for both the drill-and-blast operations and the downstream processing functions, driving continuous end-to-end improvements in the value chain.

When bundled with Orica’s FRAGTrack Conveyor technology in a fragmentation monitoring solution, it allows further analysis of the crusher’s performance and the impact of blasting parameters in a production workflow in real time.

Orica’s vice-president of digital solutions, Raj Mathiravedu, said: ‘The full adoption of AI technology into our architecture, coupled with our strategic partnership with Microsoft, allows us to expedite the delivery of capabilities that were not previously possible, and FRAGTrack Crusher is an example of how we leverage AI to help deliver intelligence and value to our customers.’

PSD data are provided via a real-time application programming interface (API) and industrial open-platform communication unified architecture (OPC UA) protocol to drill-and-blast software and crusher distributed control systems (DCS), allowing seamless integration into the existing site operation workflows.

FRAGTrack Crusher has already been gaining traction globally in the mining and quarry markets, where it is being utilized as a critical enabler of blasting optimization. Orica say this signals a significant transformation from the subjective nature of existing manual PSD analysis methods while eliminating the safety concerns of on-bench photography and the extensive time required to manually process and correlate to relevant data sets, including fleet-management data, to determine the material’s blast of origin.