What is Diamond Drilling?

Diamonds are extremely hard substances. They can, therefore, be used to make tools that are required for hard jobs. Diamond drilling is an example. This technique is often employed in the mining industry for mineral exploration. Diamond drilling can be essential because it is often responsible for determining whether or not a site will be mined.

There are different types of diamonds. There are gem quality stones, which are usually used to make jewelry. Then, there are industrial diamonds. These can be used to make the drill bits used for diamond drilling. These bits are often designed to penetrate a particular type of material and may not be suitable for other types of drilling.

A diamond drilling system is quite complex, but it can be simplified by focusing on three parts. First, there is the rotary drill. This is the bulk of the machine, which provides the power. Second, there is the drill rod, which is a barrel that will contain a core when drilling is complete. Third, there is the diamond bit, which is a circular tool that has an open middle area and clears entry into the ground.

A core is a section of Earth removed for inspection. This material usually determines the fate of a potential mining site. There are four standard core sizes. When large core samples are desired, larger drill bits, larger drill rods, and more power is needed. This will result in much higher costs.

To understand how cores are extracted, the three parts identified earlier must be considered. The drill extends into a drill rod, which has a diamond drill bit on the end. The drill uses rotary action to provide power to force the drill bit into the ground.

As the drill bit penetrates the Earth and the drill rod slides in, a core is forced through the hole in the middle of the drill bit. The core then continues sliding into the drill rod. Inside each drill rod is a wire mechanism. This is used to contain and recover the core sample inside. Without this catching mechanism, bringing the core to surface could be very difficult.

When one drill rod is completely in the ground, another is usually screwed to the top of it allowing deeper penetration. Once all the necessary drill rods have been filled with cores, they are retrieved from the ground. They are generally stored in sectional boxes that correlate to the drill rod from which they were obtained. There is a great deal of information that can be determined from them. This includes mineralization, recovery percentage, and rock quality.