(71) William Abraham, Inspector of Mines for the Bendigo district, reported: 'Some of our northern mines have recently started shafts from the surface, and have made a great mistake in not sinking the shaft with four compartments, one to be used for an
upcast'.
Two new 5.7 m diameter
upcast shafts (VS4A1 and VS4A2) will be raisebored from surface to 800 m.
UPCAST technical documentation Available at: http://www.upcast.com (accessed 12 May 2017).
The explosion occurred on a hot day, when there would have been little natural convection, and there was some doubt whether the furnace above the
upcast had been lit the previous night.
The underground workings are ventilated by four main
upcast fans, two sited on surface and two underground.
All these tasks need to be addressed during the melting of ultrapure oxygen-free copper in induction channel furnaces, in particular in the
UPCAST furnaces [6], the application of which is expanded due to a number of technological advantages.
Currently, he's building another headstock for the
upcast shaft, the one used to ventilate the mine.
There is also a 9 m by 11 m elliptical shaft, some 156 m deep, equipped with a precast concrete brattice wall to provide
upcast ventilation in the one portion of the shaft and a 12 t capacity conveyance located on rope guides in the other.
Once holing has been made with the service shaft and
upcast ventilation is commissioned, the development rate from the exploration shaft can be raised to more than 50 m/d.