Sandvik's new DH350 surface drill rig is the first piece of equipment from the Swedish firm's Chinese product development centre
Speaking about the significance of the DH350 during a special launch event at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre-based show, Sandvik Global Construction president Thomas Schulz said, “We have our biggest assembly centre worldwide here in the Shanghai area in Jiading district, and we inaugurated in 2010 our own R&D centre, the product development centre, for China. This is the first product developed in the PDC and is only for the China market.
“This unit is to use in quarries, cement, and aggregate [applications], as well as possible engineering [projects]. It fits into our whole drill rig family, no matter if it’s top hammer or down the hole.”
The DH350 is a diesel-powered, crawler-mounted down-the-hole drilling rig, designed for drilling with 76.2mm, 101.6mm and 127mm hammers in 89–152mm (88.9mm –152.4mm) hole range.
A rigid fixed boom and feed design, and efficient state-of-the art hydraulics for boom positioning, feed, rotation, tramming, and track oscillation, is said to make the rig exceptionally accurate and productive. Operation productivity, hole accuracy and drilling smoothness are further enhanced by a heavy-duty rotary head that supplies a very high torque of 2530Nm. Fuel costs are said by Sandvik to be minimised with two separate power sources. The rig features an optimised, on-board 43kW diesel engine for drilling and ancillary operations, while an external compressor, providing compressed air for the hammer and hole flushing, is powered by an independent engine.
