Raise boring in civil and mining applications

Drilling and blasting is the traditional method of shaft excavation. This is labor intensive and time consuming. With the advent of machine boring, the RBM, or raise-boring machine, was developed to increase safety and decrease the cost of shaft construction. Compared to conventional drill-and-blast shaft excavation methods, raise boring offers many advantages: (1) Safety; (2) increased productivity; (3) disturbance of the rock unit from its equilibrium state is not as great as when using drilling and blasting methods; (4) excavation crew size is smaller; and (5) resultant bottom-line reduction in cost of shaft construction.