Hot Rods
There’s no official record of how many holes have been punched into Canada’s landscape, but when it comes to knowing who did much of the exploration and development drilling, the name Boart Longyear often comes up.
In fact, the company has been drilling mining and exploration holes in almost every part of Canada for more than 18 years now. From the frozen Arctic, to swamps, bogs and the flat lands of the Prairies, to the rugged coastal and mountain regions, Boart Longyear has been almost everywhere helping the mining industry find and develop new mineral deposits.
In addition to providing equipment and contract drilling services here in Canada and more than 40 other countries, the company also sends its products to about 100 countries around the world where harsher environments, and sometimes ‘less friendly’ surroundings, put their equipment to new and often severe tests.
It’s these kinds of conditions, however, that have made Boart Longyear’s equipment what it is today. Field reports and performance ratings are vital and the company says that feedback from drill sites play a big part in the design of new products.
In fact, performance is what the company’s reputation is based on and while its Mississauga and North Bay operations have only been in Canada since 1995, the name “Longyear” dates back to 1886 when Edmund J. Longyear, a mining engineer from the first graduating class at the Michigan School of Mines, drilled the first diamond core hole in northern Minnesota.
Since then, advances in equipment technology and drilling techniques have naturally evolved as mining grew in popularity and became recognized as a profitable and full-fledged industry.
Over the years, and through until 1970 when Robert Longyear passed away (he was the last in a generation of family owners) the company was run by its Board of Directors.
In 1974, however, the Board decided to sell the company to South Africa’s Boart International, a company dating back to the 1930s when the drilling industry saw great improvements in diamond drilling technology, including the use of industrial-quality diamonds mined in Africa, called “Boarts.”
The financial support from Boart International, combined with Longyear’s technical expertise, resulted in a perfect blend to create Boart Longyear, now one of the larger and more powerful drilling organizations in the world.
Since the initial Boart Longyear merger, the company has gone through a number of ownership and managerial changes but the one thing that has remained constant is the variety and quality of the products it produces.
While based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Boart Longyear’s Canadian operations are (as mentioned earlier) located in Mississauga and North Bay where more than 300 employees work as an integral part in the company’s manufacturing team.
From Mississauga, Plant Manager Shakeel Khalfan says there are about 75 employees working at the facility, 13 in the office and another 62 in the plant.
From the street, the facility has outstanding “curb appeal” thanks to extensive landscaping and modern architecture while at the back of the 66,000 sq foot building there’s a full-blown manufacturing operation including shipping and loading docks, welding and machining shops, painting and finishing bays, plus a network of huge machines that work in unison to fabricate drill rods and connectors.
“Drills are only as good as the rods that go together to make them. In other words, they’re somewhat like links in a chain. If a single rod fails, the entire drilling system fails and for this reason, each and every section of rod goes through a rigorous set of inspections,” says Khalfan.
From the moment the raw rods are offloaded from the trucks coming in from BLY’s supply base, each and every section (multiple cut lengths up to 24-foot sections) is tagged and stacked accordingly.
While most of the rod material arrive damage free, Khalfan says that regardless of what appears to be a “strong and straight” piece of steel, “what comes in the door is far from the product that goes out.”
All rod material has straight-cut ends that need to be fabricated with “male/female” connectors. Through a series of steps involving heating, forging and machining customized end connectors.
Post fabrication, each rod is heat treated to engineered paramaters giving the rod the structure and integrity required by the customer for the drilling application specified.
Khalfan says there are multiple “pit” furnaces built into the floor at the back of the plant. Each furnace is capable of its own set of process paramaters and can handle multiple diameter and rod length configurations at a time.
Following full immersion into the furnace for a specified time and temperature, the rods, (affectionately called “Molten Spaghetti”) are cooled to ambient temperature before being moved to an inspection are where they are “eye balled” by highly skilled workers who literally do a visual inspection.
“It may look like an unscientific way of checking for slight bends or other curves in the rods but believe me, it’s not because the human eye can often see things that electronic sensors can’t,” says Khalfan.
As each rod goes through a straightening inspection, a worker looks down the length of each piece and slowly rotates it by hand. Should a bend or other defection be detected, the rod is either removed or “bent back to true” by using a hand-controlled hydraulic press.
Like many of the work stations in the plant, the “straightener” is manned by workers with many years of experience.
In fact, Khalfan says that many of the ‘stations’ are operated by long-time Boart Longyear employees, some reaching 46 years of experience on the manufacturing floor.
“People,” says Khalfan, “are one of the best things about our company because they all have a sense of pride in what they make. From our receptionist, to the guys at the back working the furnaces, to everyone in between, there seems to be a team feeling; especially when something “personal” happens. Birthdays, anniversaries, babies being born, or deaths in a family, it doesn’t matter; every occasion is recognized and that’s what makes this place work.”
Just like the Mississauga operation, the North Bay operations [plant], located just steps from Lake Nipissing, is equally a “team effort” with a “family” atmosphere where more than 230 employees manufacture products for the Minerals & Exploration sector.
With more than 2,000 active part numbers, the North Bay operation, which started initial production in the 1930s, remains in most part at the same site today.
State-of-the-art robotics’ manufacturing is located in a second building nearby but as Plant Manager Derek Donofrio says, the heart of the North Bay operation where the majority of employees are located remains at the original site.
“Original,” he says, “only to the point that the building is located at the same Main Street address as in the 1930s but there have been five additions and extensions made over the years and now the entire operation is going through probably its most dramatic changes ever.”
Based on tradition, Boart Longyear has always kept pace with technology when it comes to manufacturing coring rods and casing (1.25 million units annually) wire-line (1 million components annually) and surface drill rig components, and now, Donofrio says the com
pany is going one step further by helping ensure its on-floor systems work on an “as needed” basis.
“By systematically assuring that every employee has what they need, where and when they need it (no sooner, no later), we can streamline our flow of information, our flow of materials and ultimately, our flow of product.
“With Phase I of the Boart Longyear Operating System (BLY OS) well underway and more than a dozen pieces of manufacturing equipment already repositioned on the shop floor over the last four months, Phase I “flow” is expected to be completed by mid year, but probably sooner.”
While it’s not unusual for manufacturers to move equipment around on the shop floor, the Boart Longyear move is somewhat unique in that the workers are playing an instrumental role in saying “where” the machines go – a fundamental principle of the BLY OS.
“Beginning last summer we invited all employees to get involved with the shop layout by holding planning sessions where they were given a “blank” factory floor plan, along with scaled cut-outs of the individual pieces of equipment, even work-benches and asked them what worked best for them.
“Not only did we ask them to focus on ease of operation and convenience, we emphasized “safety” and encouraged them to come forward with any issues involving their work areas and not to be shy about asking for changes and additions to make their jobs safer.”
Donofrio says the company is very pleased with the suggestions the employees have come forward with and he says that by giving everyone “a say” in their work environment has resulted in many positive, and safe, ideas for North Bay’s new “flow” system.
Comments