Published in the February 2015 Australia’s Mining Monthly
Two Australian companies have embraced drone technology to make lighter and quicker work of the inspection of mining equipment. Soto Consulting Engineer’s aerial photography specialist Coptercam was one of the first to adopt drones and the benefits are so obvious it is a wonder the mining industry did not turn to them much sooner.
The solution largely eliminates the need for teams of personnel, rigging and scaffolding and all the associated dangers, plus it cuts down much of the time it previously took for inspections of large-scale plant and equipment.
The drone alternative puts more control in the hands of proprietors through major cost savings and the near-elimination of shutdowns for plant audits.
“Heavy industrial and mining environments, for instance, are harsh on both the service personnel and equipment, plus the downtime associated with work can be a very expensive exercise,” Soto Group managing director Frank Soto said.
“Safety of the people involved is always at some sort of risk as inspection procedures normally involve an element of physical danger.
“Then there are cases where the overall condition of structures on some sites is perpetually overlooked because access is difficult, dangerous and expensive for operators and auditors.”
Soto’s association with Coptercam opens up possibilities across a range of industries including civil engineering, mining, bulk handling, forensic engineering as well as for services to the manufacturing and minerals processing sectors.
The drone solution through Soto/Coptercam involves very few people and can achieve in a single day what traditional means would in a week.
For example, where a team of professionals would be assembled with harnesses, scaffolding and other structures, a Coptercam craft is simply flown into the required areas with a specially mounted camera capable of high resolution photo stills and video or thermal imaging.
The drone is operated remotely from a safe base on the ground by a fully certified Coptercam pilot alongside a Soto engineer viewing a HD monitor in real time during the inspection exercise.
The Coptercam operation is a two-person crew (pilot and camera operator), which divides the task of controlling the aircraft and focusing on the image capture. This is safer and ensures a better result.
Structures that have already been inspected by Coptercam technology include bridges, exhaust stacks, roads, elevated conveyors, and handling towers.
Generally, a site does not even need a shutdown.
“Statutory audits in the coal mining sector will be one of the real beneficiaries of our new solution,” Soto said.
“The coal mining industry provides for statutory structural audits to be undertaken annually to locate potential hazards arising through vibration, stress fatigue or corrosion.
“These audits presently consume significant man hours.
“Often difficult access and terrain precludes many structures from complete inspection and the true condition of the structure or plant remains unseen and unreported possibly for years, thus giving rise to hazardous issues and expensive consequences.”
Coptercam’s Glen McGarry said traditional methods of site inspection – whether at a mine site, exhaust stack, bulk handling facility or high rise structure – always involved a large team of people, a lot of occupational health and safety inductions and familiarisation, and took a lot of time to complete.
“Whereas traditionally there has always been a risk of people and contractors getting injured, the use of drones minimises risk especially at heights or confined spaces,” McGarry said.
“For example, the legal height limit for us to fly a drone is 122m, so to inspect a smoke stack we simply fly the drone straight up from the ground 122m high, whereas before it used to involve personnel on ropes coming in from the top, which is slow and puts lives at risk.
“Our task with Soto is to photograph or video the infrastructure in a systematic manner to document the structure and make an assessment.”
