Bench Depletion allows users to deal with remnant material that is leftover from the depletion surface. This step deals with the depleted Phase Solid and the flitches within it. If a phase does not incorporate flitch mining, the flitch level will equal the bench level. Material from flitches can either be removed or sent down; sending material up is not an option.
Defining Areas
Areas within the filch to be reallocated need to be defined by a closed polygon that can be created using the CAD tools in the viewport toolbar. The CAD tools are found in various other steps within RR and behave in the same manner except for two buttons, “Generate Ramp Shots” and “Add Contours”.
To aid with identifying areas of interest, a slider bar exists on the left-hand side of the main viewport. This slider acts on the Z-plane and can be used to highlight areas that are below a certain thickness. The colours for highlighting areas above and below the thickness heigh can be changed to suit users preferences.
Reassigning Material
Choosing what to do with the material defined within a polygon can be made by right-clicking on the polygon and selecting an option from the context menu.
The EstCon (estimated contour) column provides users with a high-level estimate on whether or not remnant material may be present within a flitch. This number is not used anywhere else within the software and is by no means accurate. The higher the number, the higher the change there is material that needs attention.
Bench Silhouettes
It is important to understand that the benches dealt with in Bench Depletion are based on the Depleted Phase Solids, not the Original Phase Solid. This means that material sent to the flitch below will be trimmed by the silhouette of the receiving flitch. A simple example of the behaviour is shown below.
