Louhintaliike Ylimäki Oy, headquartered in Lapua, is a family business that specialises in large-scale blasting and quarrying operations covering the areas of Pirkanmaa, Western and Central Finland and North Ostrobothnia. With more than 40 years of experience in the industry, the company guarantees its customers efficient and flexible service, helping it become one of the biggest quarrying operators in Finland.

Aatos Ylimäki founded Louhintaliike Ylimäki Oy in 1983. The company started out with rented equipment, but soon acquired its own manual drill and tractor-mounted air compressor. The company’s first contract was foundation work for a vocational school (Hervannan ammattiopilaitos) in Tampere. Over the years, the company’s fleet of equipment and number of personnel has grown. In 2012, the family company was transferred to the next generation, and since 2015 it has been headed by Matti Ylimäki.

Picture: Louhintaliike Ylimäki’s fleet includes six Sandvik open-pit drill rigs. According to Managing Director Matti Ylimäki (centre), head charger Matti Pitkäjärvi and driller Markku Viitanen, Louhintaliike Ylimäki has relied on the quality of Robit’s consumables, such as drill bits, rods and shanks, in its drilling operations for more than 20 years.

Quarrying with a large capacity
Today, Louhintaliike Ylimäki is known for carrying out large-scale blasting operations. With a staff of 20 and a fleet of 18 machines, the company performs rock extractions amounting to 7 million tonnes a year in a range of sites.
“Among our customers are aggregate suppliers, crushing companies and earthworks companies. We blast rock in open-pit mines in roughly 70 different sites every year; in recent years, we have also carried out a number of contracts for wind farms. We have numerous long-term customer relationships, which helps us in planning our operations in advance. Our services include crushing extractions and other large-scale quarrying, excavation of building foundations and road alignments, rock-breaking using a hydraulic rock hammer, per-metre drilling, rock slope scanning and hole straightness measuring,” lists Managing Director and head charger Matti Ylimäki.

Top-notch machine performance
Louhintaliike Ylimäki’s fleet of drilling equipment consists of six mid-range Sandvik drill rigs for open-pit mining and two Doosan excavators equipped with an ExcaDrill rock drilling attachment. The company also extensively uses rock-breaking equipment: 14 primarily Atlas Copco rock hammers mounted on ten 30–35-tonne excavators, most of which are from Doosan’s range. A wide array of other equipment used in quarrying contracts, from dumpers to vibration meters, is also in the company’s fleet.
Drill rigs are replaced after roughly 5 to 6 years of use; in one year, a single rig drills around 60 to 70 kilometres of holes in rock. The equipment is maintained at our own workshop in Lapua and of course we also use the equipment supplier’s maintenance services,” says Ylimäki.

Decades of co-operation with Robit Louhintaliike Ylimäki has relied on the quality of Robit’s consumables, such as drill bits, rods and shanks, in its drilling operations for more than 20 years. “Robit is a very important partner to us. As a Finnish operator, their service and products are always nearby, they listen closely to customer feedback, and perhaps most importantly for an operator of our size, their service is flexible – Sales Manager Esa-Matti Polvi is very pro-active, always on the lookout for new solutions to further enhance our operations. And of course the products are in top condition, which enables efficient drilling and well as a good price/quality ratio. Robit’s continuous product development brings better solutions to market and if we need, say, a few dozen special bits, they will be produced in Lempäälä just the way we want them and on a tight schedule,” praises Ylimäki.

A container with drilling products on site
A year ago, Robit set up a consignment stock at Louhintaliike Ylimäki’s location in Lapua.
“The products stocked in the container include all the drilling consumables we need, meaning bits, rods and shanks, as well as coupling sleeves and bit adapters, to name a few. Robit invoices us for the products we use, and we place orders to ensure the shelves are always stocked with what we need. The container itself was made to be user-friendly, so picking products and, for instance, using a forklift to lift drill rods onto the rack is easy. Drillers bring the products to the worksite with them in their vehicles, and they always have enough for one or two weeks’ worth of work on the rig,” says infrastructure engineer and head charger Matti Pitkäjärvi.
Robit’s consignment stock has significantly improved Louhintaliike Ylimäki’s logistics:
“It makes things easier for drillers when they can pick up the consumables they need from a single location straight off the shelf, without having to order them separately,” says Pitkäjärvi.

Picture: A year ago, Robit set up a consignment stock at Louhintaliike Ylimäki’s location in Lapua. The products stocked in the container include all the required drilling consumables, i.e. bits, rods and shanks, as well as coupling sleeves and bit adapters, among other things. Robit invoices for the products used, and orders are placed to ensure the shelves are always stocked as needed.

Robit is supplying consumables for gabbro quarrying in Sohar, Oman. The tools are being supplied by Robit’s distributor, Pioneers For Mining.

Robit consumables are performing well in the hard rock formation, in the North Oman, and thus, getting positive feedback from the customer. The gabbro quarries are one of the toughest and challenging areas among Oman rock formation.

Despite the current travel restrictions, the seamless cooperation between Robit, Pioneers For Mining and the customer including continuous follow-up on Robit product quality and support, enables a strong sales development in Sohar region. 

Facts – Gabbro Quarry in Sohar, Oman 

Machine: Furukawa HCR 1200

Rock Formation: Hard and Abrasive

Button Bit Size: C45–89mm

Training organized by: Maqoperador S.A. (Ecuador) and Robit PLC
Objective: To give Top Hammer drilling tool customers theoretical knowhow and practical training to ensure maximum drilling performance
Location: Guayaquil, Ecuador
Date: November 22, 2019
Drill bits used: Robit HTG bit 45C76 DSR vs. a bit from another brand
Reported by: José Rodríguez, Sales Manager, Robit

Summary:

In ensuring maximum performance in Top Hammer drilling, one key element is selecting the optimal drill bit. To this end, a series of training sessions for our customers in Ecuador were organized jointly by Maqoperador, the distributor of Robit’s tools in Ecuador, and Robit.

In the theoretical part of the training we covered a wide range of topics such as drill string elements, energy flow through the drill string, correct drilling parameters, selection criteria for button bits, and total drilling costs.

For the practical training, Maqoperador arranged a visit to a quarry where the performance of two T45x76 mm bit designs was measured: a Robit Drop Centre Retrac bit vs. a bit from another brand. The other brand had overlarge 13 mm buttons whereas our bit was 11 mm. Typically customers see oversized carbides as a good feature, but our tests proved otherwise.

The difference in penetration rate was significantly in favour of Robit: 1,8 m/min vs. competitor at 1,06 m/min. In other words, Robit was faster by more than 70%.

Being able to drill faster with less effort also means a better energy flow from the drill string to the rock. This is why differences in overheating were also expected between the bits. If percussion energy is not correctly transmitted from the drill string to the rock, it will dissipate into heat, creating additional problems. Due to the overlarge buttons, the energy was not efficiently transmitted to the rock, so the competitor’s bit was overheating the shank adapter at 150 °C, while with the Robit bit, the shank adapter kept a much cooler temperature at 98 °C.

To ensure the reliability of the results, the testing was performed with the same drill rig, the same operator in the same quarry, using the same drilling parameters at a distance of 1 metre between the holes of each bit.

What was particularly rewarding for us to see was how actively the attendees participated in the training. Events like this are very rarely, if ever, arranged by other brands or distributors, so they truly add great value for our customers and help enhance the Robit brand. We will soon be organizing the same training in other parts of the world. Stay tuned!