WebGen™ 200 – second generation Wireless Initiating System

WebGen™ 200 improves on Orica’s unique first-generation system with enhanced capabilities for safe and reliable wireless initiation of blasts on the surface and underground.  The second-generation system offers four variants of primers specifically designed for surface, underground development and underground production blasting.  

Blastholes primed with WebGen™ 200 have no wires between or in blastholes.  The primers are remotely initiated using magnetic induction signals that penetrate rock, air and water.  This opens new opportunities for surface and underground mines to improve recovery, reduce dilution, and increase production by reducing operational delays and scheduling constraints.  In underground mines, WebGen™ significantly reduces risk to personnel by reducing or eliminating the need to re-enter stopes and drawpoints to connect blastholes with wire or signal tube.  In surface mines, WebGen™ reduces constraints on the mine schedule by allowing sleeping blasts to be converted to haulroads.

WebGen™ primers are encoded in groups that can be fired together to make larger blasts when operationally convenient.  Alternatively, with careful design a blasting sequence can be changed at short notice without the need to send people to disconnect and reconnect blastholes.  WebGen™ primers can be slept for up to 60 days after encoding, giving operational flexibility to fire blasts when environmental conditions or production demands dictate.

WebGen™ is offered as a service operated by trained Orica WebGen™ technicians and specialists.  Before deploying WebGen™, Orica will do a signal survey to determine the practical operational range of the magnetic induction signal in the local host rock.  Signal range primarily depends on mineralogy.   The sleep time of blastholes may be limited to less than 60 days by heat or reactivity.  Reactivity testing and inhibited explosives may be required to achieve extended sleep times.

WebGen™ 200 offers four variants of primers specifically designed for surface, underground development and underground production blasting. 

WebGen™ in Surface Mining

WebGen™ in Underground Mining