Sandvik Mining says it has secured an order to provide a DR410i rotary drill rig, geared up for autonomous operation, to Mariana Minerals’ Copper One mine in Utah, USA.
The rig has been delivered to website with commissioning of AutoMine® Floor Drilling ongoing, the OEM says.
The challenge marks the start of a collaboration between Sandvik and Mariana Minerals to discover and advance autonomous floor drilling in a next-generation mining surroundings.
Within the March quarter of 2026, Mariana Minerals additionally bought Deswik Mine Planning software program for its Copper One mine, increasing its funding with Sandvik to incorporate digital property.
Mariana Minerals is a vertically-integrated, software-led mining firm centered on the manufacturing of vital minerals. At its Copper One website, the corporate is creating an “autonomy-first” operation, the place gear and processes are designed to be built-in into MarianaOS, Mariana’s internally developed autonomous orchestration platform.
As a part of this method, the Sandvik DR410i will probably be deployed as an autonomous-ready drill, with the rig built-in into MarianaOS utilizing the high-resolution operational and subsurface information to optimise downstream selections throughout the mine and processing plan, Sandvik says.
The Sandvik DR410i is a compact and high-performance rotary blasthole drill rig for floor mining, able to drilling 152-251 mm holes. It options Sandvik’s iSeries structure and DRi system. The latter allows real-time information seize and supporting drill planning, execution and evaluation.
With AutoMine Floor Drilling, Sandvik presently provides totally autonomous floor drilling, permitting a number of rigs to function autonomously from a distant management room. This resolution enhances security by eradicating personnel from the drill website, whereas enhancing consistency, utilisation and general productiveness.
Mats Eriksson, President of Sandvik Mining, mentioned: “This challenge displays a shared ambition to advance the position of automation in floor mining. By working carefully with Mariana Minerals, we have now the chance to additional develop our autonomous drilling capabilities whereas supporting a brand new method to mine design and operation.”
Turner Caldwell, CEO of Mariana Minerals, added: “Our imaginative and prescient is to construct mining operations the place autonomy is embedded from day one. Integrating Sandvik’s drill platform into our broader system structure is a vital step in the direction of making a extra related and adaptive operation at Copper One.”
Past the preliminary gear supply, each corporations are working in the direction of continued collaboration because the Copper One challenge develops and as Mariana Minerals progresses extra initiatives in North America, Sandvik says.
Earlier within the month, Mariana introduced that it had begun integrating autonomous haulage capabilities into MarianaOS via a partnership with Pronto, the Silicon Valley-based autonomous haulage pioneer.
