Meister was speaking into a cell phone over the drone of the engine, coordinating the blast that would move 60,000 tons of volcanic rock at the Rinker Materials-owned quarry 45 miles north of Flagstaff.

Atlas Copco’s drills perform among the beauty and remoteness of Southeast Alaska.

An Oregon producer replaces two air drills with a more-productive ROC D5 to meet high demand.

The pictures most people conjure up when New York City (NYC) comes to mind are skyscrapers, the bright lights of Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center at Christmastime and Fifth Avenue where only the affluent dare to shop.

Once the overburden is removed, the quarrying procedure starts by drilling and blasting in-situ rock. For the quarry manager, the quest is to carry out both activities for the least cost possible, just as he aims to do with the crushing/screening process.

Arizona company gleans resources throughout the state.

The NSSGA Drilling and Blasting Seminar drew 140 attendees to the Hershey, Pa.

Finndrill Inc., a Midwestern drilling and blasting contractor, serves a wide variety of customers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois and Indiana. It's not as if there is a shortage of rock to be quarried. Finndrill and its fleet of versatile Tamrock and Driltech drill rigs from Sandvik Mining and Construction produce 15 to 20 million tons of aggregate material each year – that's a lot of limestone, dolomite, quartzite, basalt, pyrite and granite.

For stone producers, blasting is the primary crushing stage. Thus, the efficiency of downstream processing hinges on the success of the blasting program. The growing popularity of high-accuracy electronic detonators means the potential for an expansion of a quarry blasting program's capabilities and improved safety as well. Precision timing, achieved with electronic detonators, can deliver consistent blast-to-blast results previously unobtainable with traditional pyrotechnic blasting systems, according to industry blasting experts.