Customers at forefront of drill rig remote screen development

In 2014 we introduced a completely new radio remote controlled drill rig to our surface top hammer drill rig offering, the Dino DC400Ri. The concept of this new drill rig drew extensively on the experience of customers and users. Continuing this successful cooperation, Dino customers were invited to join a remote screen beta-test program.

Valuable feedback for better solutions

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Sandvik Construction is continuously striving to take its Surface Drilling products and solutions to a higher level. "Customer cooperation is essential in product development and especially in testing the new ideas in practice," says Ilkka Lahdelma, Product Line Manager, Surface Drilling, Sandvik Construction. He continues "We want to involve our customers to provide us with valuable feedback for product improvements already in product development phase, not only after the product is released to the market."

The remote screen

One of the latest such products developed by Sandvik is the remote screen, which is a wireless screen solution for radio remote controlled drill rigs. Traditionally drill rig operator screens have been attached to the drill rig itself, but this new solution enables the attachment of the screen to the radio remote controller instead.

The remote screen is based on a common mobile device hardware platform with an Android operating system. Practically this means that any mobile device can be chosen, such as a 7" tablet PC or a mobile phone, to act as the screen. Communication between the drill rig and the remote screen is handled over a WLAN modem that is installed to the drill rig. At this stage, the remote screen provides the operator with three different views: alignment view for aiming the feed, drilling view for seeing the drilling parameters and progress of the hole, and tramming view.

The remote screen beta-test program

The remote screen option will be available as an optional extra for the Dino DC400Ri in 2016. Currently, the system is being field tested by selected customers that applied for the remote screen beta-test program earlier this year. The aim of the program was to collect feedback and development ideas to further advance the new solution.

The remote screen is not yet a commercialized product or available for sale. Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy reserves all rights to change product specifications without notice. Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy reserves the rights to select the customers to be accepted to the test program.