Tool replaces archaic method of surveying: Sudbury innovator developed a laser tool, which takes the guess work out of underground mapping.

Gary Hubley loves miners.

He loves their good-hearted nature and the camaraderie of how backbreaking work binds them together.

And the 47-year-old Sudbury underground surveyor will do anything to make their jobs, and his, much easier.

Hubley is the inventor of a new tool to allow miners to quickly and easily align drifts for excavation. He claims his wall-mounted laser alignment system, known as the LAZERod, can withstand the rigours of mining and still perform accurately.

In his 27 years of underground and surface work for companies such as Falconbridge Ltd., and from his independent contract work, the method of surveying was always the same.

It was an archaic and entirely unscientific practice of using two rocks tied to blasting wire to determine line and grade, an age-old method Hubley derisively refers to as "plumb bombs blowing in the breeze."

Ventilation systems below ground need to be shut down and mining machinery lays idle as the surveyors interrupt the mining cycle every couple of hundred feet of tunneling.

Hubley says mining off line or off grade is an expensive process, yet few mine managers believed that accurate surveying of an excavation is an important function in the mining cycle.

Most thought their productivity problems were solved with bigger scoop buckets, he says.

The technological advances that had been made in other fields of surveying had yet to reach the mining industry.

Surely there had to be a solution.

So a frustrated Hubley began working the problem to design a precision instrument that could withstand the rigours of the mining environment.

He felt the first step was defining the math solution, which is that two planes intersecting determine a vector; that vector can be represented by a laser beam.

Hubley spent four years designing a wall-mounted laser device to represent that vector accurately.

Armed with $20,000 from CAMIRO, a mine research organization, and another $20,000 from IRAP, a Natural Research Council agency, he developed a prototype which is now ready for the market.

Made of solid stainless steel, brass and aluminum, his machine-engineered device is durable enough to survive the harsh and corrosive environment of underground mining even direct blasts - and still maintain its accuracy, he says. The LAZERod can be used at distances much greater than the conventional lines and can be installed and used in every mining scenario from raises to drifts to ramps.

In offering a free 30-day trial offer, Hubley has sold 50 LAZERods to companies such as J.S. Redpath and Inco. So far none of the devices have been returned, and most recently new orders for the product have been placed.

"What I've developed is something that can be installed anywhere to replace the blasting wire method. It's a quick and dirty method, and a surveyor can install it without having to interrupt the mining cycle and mining personnel at the face," says Hubley, which is ultimately safer.

"You bolt it to the wall, and with the laser pointer the miner walks to the face and marks his line.

"When I get this into the hands of the miner, it sells itself."

As a graduate of survey programs at Algonquin College and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Hubley says having a sound educational background combined with years of mining experience has allowed him to be innovative in his professional life.

"I don't use calculus or integration or any kind of sophisticated methodology. It's plain surveying 101."

At $2,000 per system, Hubley says it is a small price to pay considering the return on investment.

"I once calculated an operating mine spends a quarter million dollars in loss of opportunity, expenses in ground control and wear-and-tear on equipment by having to align drifts properly and having to re-bolt and re-screen.

"If you're not mining on line and on-grade, then quit mining because you're writing your mistakes in rock."

www.minealign.com