K-MINE’s End-to-End Stope Integration Process

From Optimization to Practical Design
The K-MINE stope optimizer handles the heavy lifting upfront. It starts directly from the block model, grouping blocks into clusters that follow the ore strike and dip. It keeps each cluster within the angular limits allowed by the mining method, evaluates economics, and preserves the geometry required by the chosen method. By the time the engineer receives the output, the stopes are no longer abstract outlines. They already have dimensions, dilution control, and heights that make sense for the method, along with an orientation consistent with the orebody. Integrating them into the design is not about fixing or shaping them; it is about placing these already valid stopes into the actual underground environment of a specific mine.

Validating Stopes Against Site-Specific Constraints
The first step after receiving the optimized stopes is checking them against site-specific rules. While the optimizer worked within the provided boundaries, every mine has local restrictions that rarely appear in public documentation. These include protective pillars, areas with reduced rock mass quality, levels where drilling from one direction is impractical, or panels that must use backfill.

Each stope receives a local status: accepted as is, accepted with backfill, accepted only with a reduced height, or flagged to be rerun under stricter constraints. The logic is simple: the optimizer enforces general mining method constraints, and this pass enforces local mine constraints. This is particularly important in narrow vein operations. The optimizer might follow the vein closely, but the geotechnical requirements of a particular level may demand support or backfill for certain spans. Without this step, the designer would correct the same issues at a more advanced stage.

Aligning Stopes with Mine Geometry and Infrastructure
Once a stope passes local validation, it must be placed into the existing mine layout. The optimizer works in the coordinate system of the deposit, but the designer works in the coordinate system of the mine – utilizing levels, ramps, crosscuts, and ventilation drifts. This translation is the essence of integration.

• Vein Deposits (Longhole or Mechanized Cut-and-Fill): Integration usually means generating short access drifts and drilling bays at the correct elevation and azimuth while keeping the distance to the face minimal to preserve selectivity.
• Stratiform or Room-and-Pillar: Integration is mostly alignment – snapping the optimized stope to the mine’s existing grid, keeping pillars intact, and using established ventilation branches.
• Massive Orebodies (Sublevel Stoping): The stope shape is usually sound, but it still requires a ramp or sublevel access, drill drifts, and ventilation connections.

In every case, the design process does not invent geometry; it materializes the geometry created by the optimizer.

Adding the Time Dimension: Scheduling and Sequencing
Once a stope is spatially placed, the time dimension must be added. Optimization tells us what is worth mining; design and scheduling determine when and in what order it can be mined. This order varies strongly by deposit type.

In narrow veins with backfill, adjacent stopes rarely run in parallel due to sequencing, ventilation, and stability requirements. In room-and-pillar operations, more parallelism is possible, but only if pillar spacing and airflow are not compromised. In sublevel stoping, level-by-level directionality dominates. Mining a lower stope before its upstream partner might look profitable in isolation, but it breaks access and disrupts production flow.

During integration, we attach precedence links and mutual exclusion rules to each stope. One may be mined only after the neighbor’s backfill has cured. Another may not run in parallel with a stope sharing the same ventilation branch. A third may require ramp development to a specific level. When these relationships are embedded at this stage, the scheduling system receives a coherent network of tasks rather than just a list of profitable shapes.

Handling Re-optimization and Design Updates
Modern mine planning workflows must handle re-optimization efficiently. Prices change, cut-offs shift, and new drilling updates the block model. The value of an optimizer is the ability to rerun it, but doing so is inefficient if every new stope forces the designer to redraw accesses or rebuild the plan.

Integration must preserve the identity of the stope objects and their connections. Each stope needs a stable identifier, and development created for that stope must know it belongs to it. This allows for controlled updates:

• If the stope changes slightly, regenerate only the attached crosscut.
• If it changes significantly, flag it for redesign.
• If only economic parameters change, pass those to scheduling and keep the geometry intact.

The tolerance for automatic updates depends on the method. Vein mining has almost no tolerance; even small width changes affect support strategies, so updates are often manual. Sublevel stoping is the most flexible; as long as level spacing and height remain valid, access development can be rebuilt automatically.