Using drones across the entire mining industry is proving transformational, and with this project our focus was on mineral deposit exploration via drone. If a signal from a deposit is there using specialist drone mag survey equipment we’ll detect it. Our mission was clear, help Aztec Minerals locate potential deposits quickly, in turn save them on exploration time and costs at their claim.
The survey took place in Tombstone Arizona. The area presented a variety of unique challenges, with the location itself being a historic mining site since Tombstone’s incorporation in 1881. This meant lots of old, often unmarked shafts and pits making it unsafe for traditional ground survey crews, couple this with proximity to a US military installation and the Mexican border making it difficult for traditional airborne survey via helicopter, and finally throw in an active quarry sitting in the middle of the claim, meaning heavy machinery potentially causing magnetic interference. With all of these factors affecting the site, a modern approach is required in order for the client to accurately survey their claim.
Aztec Minerals hope was to find a workable solution. Our expertise within the mining sector and proven record of delivering drone solutions gave skymineUAV the edge.
By replacing ground and/or the traditional airborne survey with our drone based sensors we were able to capture quality data for our client. With savings on both cost and time and after post project feedback, it’s safe to say Aztec Minerals future use of drones, when it comes to both magnetic and other types of survey will grow significantly.
Even with some poor weather that meant three days of our systems being grounded, yes it rained in Arizona! We successfully conducted a claim block of roughly 300 line KMs in less than one week. The client stated “Using traditional ground methods this survey could have taken closer to a month and the data would have been inferior too”. Our drone mag survey minimized noise from boulders and operator movement that is often encountered in rugged terrain ground surveys, which meant cleaner data on the final output.
Additionally with our drone, we flew at approximately 100 feet above the survey site and sometimes even closer based on our pilots and flight systems terrain following software. If you consider the client using traditional airborne methods, they would have been restricted to much higher altitudes, this again showcased the benefit of using skymineUAV for their data capture via our drone based survey system.
Using tighter line spacing and higher sensitivity we are able to create a level of information not yet seen in Arizona’s exploration mining industry and it is our hope this kind of detailed data leads directly to new understanding and discoveries for our client and the industry as a whole.
The quality of our clients data is our primary focus. The drones themselves are skymineUAV’s safer, more reliable tool to capture this data.
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