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Modern technologies for the extraction of block granite. Granite mining in modern Russia (23 photos)

Do you want to know what the capital spends billions on? I returned from another trip to the Urals, where I filmed the 1000th production in my life. In addition to industrial photographs, dirty clothes and dusty cameras, I brought with me a terrible secret.

1. Bashkiria. Quiet and picturesque places of the Southern Urals. In the villages, potatoes, river fish and fresh koumiss are sold for free. The beauty! But as soon as you turn off the road onto some dusty primer, you will definitely find yourself in some kind of production, cut or quarry.

The Urals is a treasure trove of various minerals. Even at school, in geography lessons, we were told that the Ural mountain system is one of the most ancient, formed 200-400 million years ago. Of the 55 types of the most important minerals that were developed in the USSR, 48 are represented in the Urals.

2. Meet - this is granite. Igneous rock. Granite is one of the densest, hardest and most durable rocks on earth. It is widely used in construction as a facing and road material.

3. Mansurovskoye deposit - the largest in the country for the extraction of block stone. Mansurovsky granite is mined in a single place, near the Bashkir city of Uchaly. This type of rock is considered to be one of the oldest granites in Russia and on the whole planet, estimating its geological age at 350 million years. According to geologists, the explored reserves of the deposit will last another 200 years.

4. The lightest of all Russian granites is mined here. For its soft wavy texture and milky light gray color, Mansurovsky granite is often compared with marble; it is not for nothing that it has conquered the international space and is considered one of the most popular “made in Russia” granites abroad.

It is this granite that is now being laid all over Moscow and in particular on Tverskaya Street. 90% of tiles, curbs and paving stones, which the city now buys, come from the Urals (the rest from Karelia). Five Ural quarries are working to supply granite for the My Street reconstruction program (Mansurovsky is the largest) and more than 30 stone sawing enterprises.

5. The method of extracting granite blocks is different from the types I am used to in iron ore, limestone quarries or coal mines. If in the latter a mineral is hammered, crumbled and crushed, then here the opposite is true. The geological features of the rock occurrence make it possible to extract it in sufficiently large blocks, which are convenient to work with in the future. This explains the relatively low cost of such a beautiful and high-quality material, although, of course, the concrete casting technology is cheaper.

6. The more you can chip off a block, the more it costs. But not everything is as easy as it seems. It is not for nothing that granite is one of the most durable rocks. The average rock density is 2600 kg/m, 3 . To break off such an even piece, you need to try hard.

7. The process of mining granite is similar to the process of eating truffle cake in layers. Granite lies in layers. A part of the rock is separated from the massif, which is then divided into smaller blocks.

8. There are several methods for cutting pieces of the "cake". One of them - large gas burners. The composition of granite includes quartz, which, under the influence of temperature, peels off and flies off. Thus, the burner gradually cuts through the granite. The more quartz in granite, the larger the grains, and the faster the rock is cut. In this way, a cross section of the piece is made.

11. A special chemical solution is poured into the drilled holes, which creates a "soft explosion". Inside a tight hole, the mixture expands, splits and shears granite block.

13. All workers are local (albeit tanned).
- Guys, let me take a picture of you now. Can you somehow hit with sledgehammers at the same time?
- Listen, let's better give you a sledgehammer, and we'll take everything off ourselves?

14. Gradually hammering a series of wedges, the rock cracks and voila, the new block is separated.

15. There is another method - wire sawing. It is used in the Yuzhno-Sultaevsky quarry. The bottom line is that instead of gas burners, a tricky rope cutter is used.

16. The rope is passed through the drilled holes. Gradually, the installation drives off along the guides, and a huge piece is cut out in a few hours.

17. Whoa!

21. Finished blocks are transported by loaders or dump trucks to the quarry sawing shop. Or sold as is to other sawmills.

23. Until recently, the entire stone industry was in a deplorable state. Due to the crisis, the demand of other cities for granite products fell. On the other hand, private traders began to look more and more towards the Russian stone. The course has changed, and the price of Chinese granite has risen sharply.

This is how a standard workshop for the production of granite curbs and tiles looked like two years ago.

24. After the launch of the My Street program, Ural enterprises began to revive. If before the Moscow order, the Mansurovsky quarry produced about 3,000 cubic meters of granite per month, but now this figure is twice as high.

25. With the first money from orders, new equipment was purchased, new workshops were built. The high order volume breathed life into the entire industry. Related enterprises for the production of packaging, wire rod, timber, fuels and lubricants, various equipment, etc., also pulled up. The equipment, however, was purchased entirely imported (except for dump trucks and cranes). Here is such an import substitution, however.

27. Among other things, the number of workers in the quarries was increased. On Mansur from 300 to 400 people. You have to work in three shifts. And in general, more than 4,000 people all over the Urals are now working on the production of granite for Moscow.

28. Mining companies are doing well. Even a photographer from Moscow was booked for a few days. After all, the money earned could simply be eaten away or stolen, but as we can see, production is developing and equipment is being updated.

29. If marble slabs are cut at one time, then granite has to be cut for a very long time. The saw blade moves back and forth on the slab with a drop of only 1 cm at a time. Large pieces of granite are sawn for hours.

30. Massive blocks are sawn into slabs, smaller blocks are dissolved into curbs. Every little thing, such as paving stones, does not require large blanks and is sawn (or pricked) from scraps of slabs.

32. To speed up the sawing process, there are such large and tricky wire saws.

33. On such machines, it is possible to cut slabs into 10 blocks with a height of more than two meters.

36. The cut quality is perfect.

37. An Italian master monitors the equipment settings.

38. So that passers-by do not slip on the tiles in winter, heat treatment of the surface is carried out.

39. Tiles become rough, and not as slippery as polished granite.

40. So far, heat treatment is carried out manually, but a special machine has already been installed in the workshop, and soon this process will be automated.

41. New workshop, and finished products career. This curbstone is already being laid on Tverskaya Street today. Over 3 kilometers of a straight side and 500 meters of a radius were ordered for it.

42. These borders and tiles are 350 million years old, wait a minute!

44. Chipped paving stones.

46. It took 364 trucks to deliver tiles and curbs to Tverskaya, which brought 7271 tons of granite - this is an area of 33.5 thousand m 2.

By weight, this is how to decompose thirty Boeing 747s along Tverskaya.

47. In total, Moscow ordered 47,500 tons of granite products this year. This is 2,374 trucks or 220,000 m2 of coverage. What is comparable to the area 30 football fields! This is the question that the Muscovites snickering. In a sense, this is certainly true, the capital is the richest city in the country, but the money for its renovation goes to the regions where production is rising.

48. In terms of the cost of its extraction, processing and delivery, granite is inferior to similar concrete products. But there are also some advantages:
- Granite has low water absorption and high resistance to frost and pollution. Concrete absorbs moisture better.
- concrete is abraded, it dusts more than granite.
- concrete slabs are produced at the factory, and granite is produced by nature itself.

49. Each quarry has its own texture and shade of granite. If you look at the scheme of laying tiles on the streets of Moscow, you can see a certain pattern in the picture. Tiles of different colors came from different quarries.

50. Darker granite is mined at the Tashmurunsky quarry than Mansurovsky. The quarry itself is smaller.

54. Kambulatovsky quarry.

56. This quarry ranks first in terms of efficiency in extracting cubic meters of product per worker.

58. Yuzhno-Sultaevsky quarry with large beautiful cranes.

60. In general, I have everything. I would just like to clarify that if you choose granite instead of concrete, this does not mean that everything will automatically be fine. Nothing like this. Without the right laying technology, anything will fall apart. If you make a substrate of shit and branches, then after the first winter the sidewalk / steps / curbs will float and burst from uneven loading.

62. It is not enough to buy a granite curb, it still needs to be properly installed. This curb, although crooked, was installed 10 years ago.

63. And this is his age, a concrete curb.

64. Here it is, granite. Meet on the streets of Moscow, Novosibirsk, Salekhard, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, Astana, Baku and so on in the list.

65. So if you walk along Tverskaya or any other reconstructed street, remember that you are touching a history that is 350 million years old!

66. Thank you for your attention!

I express my gratitude to the company "Granit Invest" and separately to Alexei Stepanchenko for interesting work and a detailed tour of the granite quarries!
I won't tell you a secret. That's why she's a secret.

When writing the text, an article from the site was used

K category: Stone cladding

Extraction of blocks from granite and related rocks

Blocks of granite and closely related igneous and metamorphic rocks are mined in ledges using drilling and blasting and bore-cline methods.

Ledges are developed sequentially from top to bottom at the same time one or two ledges. Ledges with a thickness of 3 to 6 m are divided into subledges, taking into account the horizontal fracturing of the massif. The height of the substeps is determined by the distance between the horizontal cracks of the array; with the buroklin method of block mining, it should be no more than 1.5 m.

With the method of borehole charges of drilling and blasting, the ledge height reaches 10-20 m.

The width of the working platform on the ledges is at least 3 m, and on the ledges, where splitting of monoliths into blocks and their passaging is planned, it is from 20 to 50 m. The length of the work front is from 50 to 150 m.

The most important process in the technology of mining granite blocks is the puncturing of large monoliths from an array, the dimensions of which depend on the distance between individual cracks, and in their absence, on the carrying capacity of lifting and transport equipment.

Efficient operation of the quarry is achieved when the monoliths are punched out of the massif in the presence of three exposed planes.

Depending on the structure, texture, physico- mechanical properties rock and the degree of its fracturing, as well as the value and purpose of the monoliths are punctured from the massif in one of the following ways: drilling and blasting using black powder; buroklinovym with the placement of wedges in boreholes, nests or natural cracks; drilling with drilling along the split lines of a continuous row of holes; thermal (using thermal cutters); combined with the use of thermal cutters and drilling or drilling and blasting methods.

The monolith separated from the array is moved by a tractor from the face to a distance of at least K) m and split into blocks and blanks of given sizes.

The monolith is split, as a rule, by the boring method with the placement of wedges in nests formed by pneumatic jackhammers, or in holes drilled by perforators.

The bore-wedge method with the placement of wedges in nests is used at a monolith height of up to 1 m in rocks capable of splitting along relatively flat planes. The monolith is split as follows. First, along the marked planes, using a pneumatic jackhammer with a removable tip in the form of a tongue or scarpel, a guide groove with a depth of 10-15 mm is cut along the splitting line. Then, in the furrow, after 150-200 mm, with a jackhammer using a scarpel or a groove, conical nests of oval section with a depth of 30-50 mm are made. Such a section of the sockets contributes to the reliable contact of the wedge with the rock and the concentration of stresses for splitting the rock in a given direction. With a hammer blow, simple wedges up to 100 mm long are hammered into the nests.

The bore-wedge method with the placement of wedges in boreholes is used when splitting a monolith from any rock.

To get blocks High Quality, observe the following the necessary conditions: splitting lines are planned parallel to the prevailing fracturing; choose the depth of holes and the distance between them, providing the lowest specific consumption of drilling; the holes are placed in the plane of the planned splitting, for which they use templates made of a steel corner or a wooden board with holes corresponding to the distance between the holes; types and sizes of wedges are determined depending on the physical and mechanical properties of the rock; the diameter of the hole is chosen in accordance with the type and size of the wedges.

When splitting blocks of cross-layered rock and harvesting plates up to 150 mm thick, through drilling of holes is carried out, regardless of the height of the monolith.

The distance between the boreholes is specified in the course of work, depending on the ease of splitting the stone, the direction of the split attributable to the stump of the layering and the line of the best split.

With a monolith height of more than 1000 mm, depending on the properties of the rock, drilling is used: multilateral - with small holes, one-sided - with small holes in combination with deep (0.75 monolith height) holes or one-sided for the entire height of the monolith.

The passivation of blocks made of granite and rocks close to it includes: chipping off large pieces along the edges of the block, forming sharp corners; chipping of individual protrusions; gradual bringing the block to standard sizes.

The blocks are passed by the method of impact processing with pneumatic jackhammers and tools reinforced with hard alloys. Rocks that are thermally cut out of the massif are treated with thermal breakers operating on a gasoline-air or oxygen-kerosene mixture.

- Extraction of blocks from granite and rocks close to it

Today, Mining Administration Vozrozhdenie is one of the largest companies for the extraction of block building and decorative stone in Russia. Offering partners and customers only excellent products of high quality, we have established ourselves a good manufacturer, a quality supplier and a reliable partner.

Sale of granite blocks

For many decades, mining and stone processing has been the main activity of our company. We strive to constantly increase the physical volume of production, and we are constantly working to improve the quality of our granite blocks. This helps us:

Own rich practical experience
Application of best practices in the extraction of natural stone of foreign colleagues
Use of powerful production technology
Modern tools and consumables

We have our own stone processing plant and comply with GOST requirements for natural stones. Our product is great for cladding and erecting walls and fences, creating steps and much more.

At our fields, blocks of the correct geometric shape with a volume of up to 5 m3 or more are produced (depending on the needs of the customer).

We use high-tech equipment of domestic and foreign production. Quarry works are carried out using:

loaders Volvo, Caterpillar
self-propelled drilling rigs Tamrock, Marini, Stone Power
diamond wire sawing machines Pellegrini, Benetti, Toolsstar
self-propelled hydro-wedge installations, etc.

Timely delivery of products is ensured by the developed transport infrastructure of the region. Own loading areas for automobile or railway transport allow us to ensure the transportation of stone to any of the regions of the Russian Federation.

We work without intermediaries and offer our customers to purchase blocks from the manufacturer at favorable price. And thanks to the unique border location of the deposits, we have the opportunity to organize flexible logistics for the supply of products for export by all modes of transport with customs clearance in Vyborg.

Extraction of natural stone in our own quarries!

Vozrozhdenie deposit

The Vozrozhdeniye deposit has been developed for more than 100 years and is perhaps the largest and most developed not only in the northwestern region, but throughout Russia. The area of the quarry is 35 hectares. Explored reserves are 8,082.0 thousand m 3 .

The technology of mining granite blocks is of strategic importance. The process of breaking off blocks of heavy-duty rocks should be accompanied by minimal production waste. In the case of irrational mining technology, the rock crumbles and the waste content may exceed 30% of the developed massif.

The extraction of finishing granite is fundamentally different from the extraction of any other solid mineral. In the second case, the integrity of the host rocks is absolutely not important, since the quality of the final extracted raw material does not depend on it. And when mining granite, this factor is the key to the economic success of the deposit. Field engineers strive to preserve the integrity of the extracted blocks as much as possible. The technology must be observed throughout the entire production chain: from cutting off a block from a common array, ending with its storage and sawing. Violation of the strength characteristics of the block cannot be corrected by any further processing. Even skillful gluing or mastication of a slab will only slightly increase the stability of a damaged stone.

There are three ways to mine stone blocks. As a rule, the method of extraction corresponds to the level of progressiveness of the deposit.
So,

Three ways to mine stone blocks

1. Explosive or blast drilling

Today, this method can be called "handicraft". The explosive method is the cheapest, but it is associated with large waste and the production of highly fractured blocks. And waste often makes up less than 70% of the volume of the array. An explosion of great power causes irreparable damage to the mined blocks, but also to the array itself. Unfortunately, the explosive method is still the most common in our country.

The process looks something like this: with the help of drilling, cavities are created in the array, into which explosives are laid. Despite engineering calculations, predicting the future fault is very conditional. Yet the explosive method implies a large amount of unpredictability. First, with the invention of explosives, this method began to be used everywhere - in granite and marble deposits around the world. The spread of the method provoked the massive development of stone quarries, because it significantly saved money, time and labor costs for stonemasons. But in the future, the disadvantages of the explosive method noticeably prevail over its advantages. With the development of technologies and, accordingly, the production base, the deposits began to abandon this method.

2. Air cushion chipping method

Holes are also drilled in the rock, into which excess air is pumped under high pressure. This method allows you to more accurately predict the location of the fault. But the most important thing is that air action does not entail crumbling and destruction of rocks, it does not increase the fracturing of blocks. This contributes to a more rational consumption of the deposit.

3. Stone cutting method

Developed field indicator, the most common method in European fields (Italy, Spain, Portugal). The separation of blocks with a stone cutter does not harm the stone at all, does not violate its physical characteristics. This is the most modern and expensive method, characterized by a minimum of waste.

We hope that soon the Russian deposits will also be supplied with the latest technical innovations for the stone-cutting method of mining. A careful method of extraction will only increase the quality and attractiveness of our stone. After all, our domestic stone is able to adequately withstand competition with European and Asian varieties.

Posted by Dmitry Chistoprudov

Bashkiria. Quiet and picturesque places of the Southern Urals. In the villages, potatoes, river fish and fresh koumiss are sold for free. The beauty! But as soon as you turn off the road onto some dusty primer, you will definitely find yourself in some kind of production, cut or quarry.

Meet - this is granite. Igneous rock. Granite is one of the densest, hardest and most durable rocks on earth. It is widely used in construction as a facing and road material.

The Mansurovskoye deposit is the largest in the country in the production of block stone. Mansurovsky granite is mined in a single place, near the Bashkir city of Uchaly. This type of rock is considered to be one of the oldest granites in Russia and on the whole planet, estimating its geological age at 350 million years. According to geologists, the explored reserves of the deposit will last another 200 years.

The lightest of all Russian granites is mined here. For its soft wavy texture and milky light gray color, Mansurovsky granite is often compared with marble; it is not for nothing that it has conquered the international space and is considered one of the most popular “made in Russia” granites abroad.

The method of extracting granite blocks is different from the types I am used to in iron ore, limestone quarries or coal mines. If in the latter a mineral is hammered, crumbled and crushed, then here the opposite is true. The geological features of the rock occurrence make it possible to extract it in sufficiently large blocks, which are convenient to work with in the future. This explains the relatively low cost of such a beautiful and high-quality material, although, of course, the concrete casting technology is cheaper.

The more you can chip off a block, the more it costs. But not everything is as easy as it seems. It is not for nothing that granite is one of the most durable rocks. The average density of the rock is 2600 kg/m3. To break off such an even piece, you need to try hard.

The process of mining granite is similar to the process of eating a layered truffle cake. Granite lies in layers. A part of the rock is separated from the massif, which is then divided into smaller blocks.

There are several methods for cutting pieces of the "cake". One of them - large gas burners. The composition of granite includes quartz, which, under the influence of temperature, peels off and flies off. Thus, the burner gradually cuts through the granite. The more quartz in granite, the larger the grains, and the faster the rock is cut. In this way, a cross section of the piece is made.

A special chemical solution is poured into the drilled holes, which creates a "soft explosion". Inside the tight hole, the mixture expands, splitting and shearing the granite block.

All workers are local (albeit tanned).

Guys, let me take a picture of you now. Can you somehow hit with sledgehammers at the same time?

Listen, let's better give you a sledgehammer, and we'll take everything off ourselves?

Gradually hammering a series of wedges, the rock cracks and voila, the new block is separated.

There is another method - wire sawing. It is used in the Yuzhno-Sultaevsky quarry. The bottom line is that instead of gas burners, a tricky rope cutter is used.

The rope is passed through the drilled holes. Gradually, the installation drives off along the guides, and a huge piece is cut out in a few hours.

Finished blocks are transported by loaders or dump trucks to the sawing shop of the quarry. Or sold as is to other sawmills.

Until recently, the entire stone mining industry was in a deplorable state. Due to the crisis, the demand of other cities for granite products fell. On the other hand, private traders began to look more and more towards the Russian stone. The course has changed, and the price of Chinese granite has risen sharply.

This is how a standard workshop for the production of granite curbs and tiles looked like two years ago.

After the launch of the My Street program, Ural enterprises began to revive. If before the Moscow order, the Mansurovsky quarry produced about 3,000 cubic meters of granite per month, but now this figure is twice as high.

With the first money from orders, new equipment was purchased, new workshops were built. The high order volume breathed life into the entire industry. Related enterprises for the production of packaging, wire rod, timber, fuels and lubricants, various equipment, etc., also pulled up. The equipment, however, was purchased entirely imported (except for dump trucks and cranes). Here is such an import substitution, however.

Among other things, the number of workers in the quarries was increased. On Mansur from 300 to 400 people. You have to work in three shifts. And in general, more than 4,000 people all over the Urals are now working on the production of granite for Moscow.

Mining companies are doing well. After all, the money earned could simply be eaten away or stolen, but as we can see, production is developing and equipment is being updated.

If marble slabs are cut at one time, then granite has to be cut for a very long time. The saw blade moves back and forth on the slab with a drop of only 1 cm at a time. Large pieces of granite are sawn for hours.

Massive blocks are sawn into slabs, smaller blocks are dissolved into curbs. Every little thing, such as paving stones, does not require large blanks and is sawn (or pricked) from scraps of slabs.

To speed up the sawing process, there are such large and tricky wire saws.

On such machines, it is possible to cut slabs into 10 blocks with a height of more than two meters.

The cut quality is perfect.

To prevent passers-by from slipping on the tile in winter, heat treatment of the surface is carried out.

The tile becomes rough, and not as slippery as polished granite.

So far, heat treatment is carried out manually, but a special machine has already been installed in the workshop, and soon this process will be automated.

New workshop, and finished products of a quarry. This curbstone is already being laid on Tverskaya Street today. Over 3 kilometers of a straight side and 500 meters of a radius were ordered for it.

Those borders and tiles are 350 million years old, wait a minute!

Chipped paving stone.

It took 364 trucks to deliver tiles and curbs to Tverskaya, which brought 7271 tons of granite - this is an area of 33.5 thousand m2.

In terms of weight, this is how to decompose thirty Boeing 747s along Tverskaya.

In total, Moscow ordered 47,500 tons of granite products this year. This is 2,374 trucks or 220,000 m2 of coverage. Which is comparable to the area of 30 football fields! This is the question that the Muscovites snickering. In a sense, this is certainly true, the capital is the richest city in the country, but the money for its renovation goes to the regions where production is rising.

In terms of the cost of its extraction, processing and delivery, granite is inferior to similar concrete products. But there are also some advantages:

Granite has low water absorption and high resistance to frost and pollution. Concrete absorbs moisture better.

Concrete is abraded, it dusts more than granite.

Concrete slabs are produced at the factory, and granite is produced by nature itself.

Each quarry has its own texture and shade of granite. If you look at the scheme of laying tiles on the streets of Moscow, you can see a certain pattern in the picture. Tiles of different colors came from different quarries.

Darker granite is mined at the Tashmurun quarry than Mansurovsky. The quarry itself is smaller.

Kambulatovsky quarry.

This quarry ranks first in terms of the efficiency of extraction of cubic meters of products per worker.

In general, I have everything. I would just like to clarify that if you choose granite instead of concrete, this does not mean that everything will automatically be fine. Nothing like this. Without the right laying technology, anything will fall apart. If you make a substrate of shit and branches, then after the first winter the sidewalk / steps / curbs will float and burst from uneven loading.

It is not enough to buy a granite curb, it still needs to be properly installed. This curb, although crooked, was installed 10 years ago.

And this is his age, a concrete curb.

Here it is, granite. Meet on the streets of Moscow, Novosibirsk, Salekhard, Tyumen, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, Astana, Baku and so on in the list.

So if you walk along Tverskaya or any other reconstructed street, remember that you are touching a history that is 350 million years old!