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Robit is using field trials, wear monitoring and local expertise to refine drilling tools for tough ground conditions.
When a drilling tool comes face to face with the rock, it encounters its greatest moment of opportunity – one that not only showcases its strengths, but also highlights avenues for improvement.
Laboratory development can establish a design’s potential, but repeated shifts in abrasive and variable ground show how consistently a tool performs, where components wear, and what needs to be changed to achieve consistent operational outcomes.
According to drilling consumables specialist Robit, these observations form an important part of product development for the company, especially as field trials allow it to study tools within complete drilling systems and work with customers on changes ranging from material selection to component redesign.
Few environments illustrate that process better than Boliden’s Kevitsa mine in Finnish Lapland. One of Finland’s largest mining operations, Kevitsa is a major nickel and copper deposit where ore zones, wall rock and waste rock place different demands on drilling equipment.
“The rock is both tough and extremely abrasive,” Kevitsa drilling development coordinator Juha Ranta said.
Conditions at the open-pit mine add another layer to the testing environment, with temperatures that can range from negative 40 degrees Celsius in winter to more than 35 degrees Celsius in summer, while production drilling is conducted almost entirely with remote-controlled rigs operating continuously in the pit.
Robit has worked with Boliden at Kevitsa since early 2025 to test and refine its H8 down-the-hole hammer. The program has paired the hammer with two different 229mm drill bits as the companies assess performance in the mine’s abrasive ground.
“At Kevitsa, rock hardness and the way impact energy reflects from the rock can differ significantly from other mines,” Ranta said.
Rather than treating wear as a final result, Robit’s testing program used it to identify the next engineering task, especially when a component that performed elsewhere was materially exposed to Kevitsa’s combination of hardness and abrasion.
“Whenever we’ve identified parts that don’t last, we’ve worked together to determine whether material changes or full component redesign is needed,” Ranta said.
Field experience has also guided the adoption of Robit’s shoulder-driven top hammer systems. In the RG design, the rod shoulder absorbs the impact energy generated during drilling instead of the thread, an arrangement that is intended to provide greater stiffness, straighter holes and longer service life than conventional C-series rods.
At Finnish sites, RG45 rods have recorded service lives more than 50 per cent longer than standard C45 tools, with some results exceeding 70 per cent. Trials in Sweden have since taken the system into daily quarry production.
Rock drilling and blasting contractor Bohus Bergsprängning began using 3660mm and 4265mm RG45 rods with 76–89mm bits in spring 2025, and performance monitoring led the contractor from trial use to full adoption.
Blasting services company Alingsås Sprängtjänst followed after a demonstration in October 2025, moving directly to implement the technology after drilling test holes.
Across Australian mines, Robit said the same field-led approach can be supported closer to site, with its 2000-square-metre Kalgoorlie-Boulder branch stocking Top Hammer, DTH, Reverse Circulation and geotechnical consumables for operations across the Eastern Goldfields.
The branch’s drilling specialists provide application advice, performance analysis and troubleshooting, including guidance on matching bits, hammers and rods to local ground conditions.
They also support product trials and ongoing performance monitoring, drawing on technical expertise from Robit’s manufacturing operations in Finland, South Korea and the UK.
Its in-house grinding operation adds another point of contact with tool performance; worn button bits can be restored to operating specification before flattened carbide buttons reduce penetration and increase the risk of cracking. The condition of those tools provides a practical record of how geology, equipment settings and maintenance practices affect wear.
By combining field trials with local monitoring and technical support, Robit can follow tool performance beyond its initial design.
The resulting feedback helps place product development in the conditions that ultimately determine success: the rock, the rig and the way each tool is used.
This feature appeared in the October 2026 edition of Australian Mining.