Safety equipment in mines

Seguridad en la mina from Martin L Vargas on Vimeo.

This is a video I found recently on the web, it shortly talks about safety equipment on mines in the north of Mexico.

Mine in Mexico

El Porvenir de Zacualpan from antonio_aguilar on Vimeo.

Mine "El Chivo" (México)

Mine "El Chivo", Mexico

Last week I visited in Zacualpan, Edo. de México a miner company called "El Porvenir de Zacualpan" they own 3 different mines in a region 2.5 hours away from Mexico City; The company was originally mexican but was sold to an important Canadian investor group. They extract silver, zinc and lead mainly.


The story started on Dec 22th when I traveled by car 2.5 hours to the South of Mexico to meet Francisco Henández geology supervisor at the mine; More than 6 hours took my visit there. When I just got in there we had a small interview where we discussed security aspects inside of the mine, they have had only 1 death in the last 7 years, the reason was rock collapsing. The biggest risk in these kind of mines is: collapsing; Because of the lack of gases and a very good ventilation system they do not have the risk of an explosion as some other mines which extract coal. In here the organization in every work group is amazing. Even I noted a very relax safety system in the mine the efficiency of each miner is very high and the accident rate is very low in comparison with some other countries like China who has the highest accident rate per year (around 3,000 deaths ever year). 


I had the opportunity to talk with different miners and supervisors, amazingly they spent more than 6 hours with me explained all the processes since the extraction until the metal´s transformation. I am preparing a short video to show you guys my experience in the mexican mine and some conclusions.


      

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE AT MINES

Örebro, Sweden 2008

During my internship at Atlas Copco I had the opportunity to go to the testing mine in Örebro, Sweden. Our visit was couple of hours merely to immerse ourselves in the subject and understand better the real mine environment. 
This mine it is owned by Atlas Copco, it is in here where they test their machines before they ship them; The big machines like scoops, diggers and drills are yield to test, every machine must be in a perfect conditions before leave the factory, I had the opportunity to test one of the huge scoops. 



  

INITIAL BRIEF

Testing Mine in Örebro, Sweden

The collaboration idea for this project is: to develop a new type of product in the area of "Rescue in mines" with a focus on user-centered design innovation.

Thousand of miners die from miner accidents every year, specially in the process of coal mining and hard rock mining.  Most of the deaths today occur in developing countries like: China, India, Mexico and rural parts of developed countries, mining rescue is the very specialized job of rescuing miners and others who have become trapped or injured underground in mines because of mining accidents and disasters such as explosions caused by firedamp, roof falls or floods.

The aim of this project is to propose a new and innovative solution to rescue miners. 

WHY "RESCUE IN MINES"...?

In the summer of 2008 after to have completed my first year of MA in Advanced Product Design in Umeå, I started a 3 months internship in the design department at Atlas Copco in Örebro, Sweden. I had the opportunity to know better what a big company like Atlas Copco does and discover the chances I have as a designer to collaborate together in a beneficial product in the mining industry. My former boss Alex brought about the idea to design a beneficial "something" to rescue people in mines, also could be used to prevent further accidents.

Umeå Institute of Design philosophy is to create innovative products which improve people's lives, therefore both matched perfectly into my idea to combine the big industry and the beneficial product, likewise in a design terms I feel is an unexplored field which has many opportunities to end up with a real project.

I am looking forward to start my degree project in collaboration with Atlas Copco and my tutors are: Alex Liebert by Atlas Copco  and Anders Smith by the UID.