Desperately seeking HELLLLLLLLPPPPPP!

Hey CSM Engineer, thank you for your quick response. I would have replied sooner, but the work week was over and I was getting ready to wind up my day. I am at home now and hopefully I can clarify some of the questions (none of which are dumb).

1. There are a number of things to reconcile against. Cu grade of the ore going in (heads), grade of the waste ore going to tailings (Tails) and grade of the concentrate itself (conc). All of these grades when matched against the tonnage milled (feed or head material) will produce a "recovery" percentage which can then be used to determine how much Cu conc should have been produced. The Cu conc is also measured by a weightometer on the conveyor to the shed, the scale weights from the transport trucks and the scale weights of the rail cars used to transport it to the dock from where it is shipped to a smelter. A reconciliation would be used to "prove" or ferret out the best number and find deficiencies in others (I am GUESSING now).

2. As it lies in the pile, to give us a more accurate idea of the amount present

a) Our desired accuracy...well compared to what we have in place now I don't think it would be hard to improve, so to answer, anything within 10% would be a godsend.

b) I'm not sure I understand your point, but I'll add that our moisture content is variable, and compaction (some test ideas have been discussed) will depend on the depth the concentrate is located in the pile.

c) Measurements of the shed are being asked for on a weekly basis, with a final month end done regularly.

If you have any ideas how to achieve what we are looking for, it would be greatly appreciated.

I agree with the other posters, but would add that it would likely be to your benefit to run a Wikipedia search or Google search on various measures of SG and look at the definitions of bulk density, true density and apparent density.

Thank you! It makes sense (or at least it seems to me, with what little grasp I do have on some of the ideas discussed). It's just so overwhelming due to the fact that I don't think I have ever worked at a mine where the reconciliations were "accurate" (being relative to what the mine manager figures is a good error).

There are so many factors: moisture, Cu grade, Fe grade, if the pile was "organized" in the shed by the truck loader, whether the filter operator was cross-eyed (sorry sarcasm has developed to a peak today), etc... I will be compiling the ideas that I have "gratefully!!!!!!!" (not sarcasm, thank you and everyone very very very much for the help) recieved here and throwing them up line from me to see if there are any that I can get some guidance on. Thank you all again for your time. I may need to ask for "HELP" again soon though .

Thanks for the link. I've added it to the list of tools to take into consideration for refining (no pun intended) our process of reconciliations.

Believe me I do not want to over complicate things anymore than they already are (too many things on the go that are all "priority one" if you catch my drift. As mentioned in a previous response, there are a lot of variables that are causing us headaches (not to mention a pile in the shed that needs a mountain goat to scale to take a good look at for measurements).

Once again, thank you very much for the input. I'll let you all know what comes of it.

The famous Del!

I am honoured to receive a reply (how does it feel to have yet another fan?) and encouragement from you!

Thank you for the pointers, believe me if I come up with something people around here are interested in promoting (and by "I" I mean with all the great help here), I will be asking for some $$$$.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with the boom in mining lately, but there has been such an influx of operating mines that the people needed to run them from labourers to engineers are hard to come by. This is why I think more and more is being asked of workers like myself. I do not know about "cheap" (yeah I'd like to be paid more, but who wouldn't), but our size might limit what we are able to offer new prospective "qualified" employees, so they end up going elsewhere.

Thanks again for the encouragement and advice!!!

Mukulmahant, thank you for the insight! The steps you provided along with all that has been posted here will hopefully get me going in the right direction (provided I can get some support here on my end of things). I like the idea of logging everything, but I can just hear the groans of protest over the man power and logistics that they envision it will take to complete. I know there is a way to do this, and if they want it done, they're going to have to commit some man hours to this project (I can guess my man hours ). I just hope this is something I can see through to the finish (focus tends to change fast around here somedays) or else I'd just as soon not start it.

Thanks again for the help!!! (I will see what comes of what I have gratefully recieved here before I repost, very good tip)

Thanks for the advice agua doc! I'll attempt just that (I just hope they can dumb it down a bit so I understand the principles of what they are explaining).

Thank you all for your help to date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds like you'll first off have to remind the great faceless voice of authority that not everything can BE first. Gotta prioritize, and this sounds like it maybe DOES belong near the top of the pile (so to speak...). I think you can make a case for a composite grab sample from several locations/depths being a representative sample, but in future, you should start earlier into the pliing process...