VKV clay-kaolin quarry – 3D machine control pilot project

Client & context

If you are responsible for a quarry like VKV, your situation may look familiar:

• You operate one or more excavators, dozers or loaders in clay and kaolin deposits.
• You rely on regular surveying to keep benches, ramps and pads close to design.
• You feel the impact when over-digging, under-digging or mis-placed material leads to extra rehandle and cost.

At this point, you may be asking whether a 3D machine control system could help your team follow design surfaces more accurately, reduce rework and improve day-to-day decision-making in the cab.

Challenge

A pilot project like this needs to answer a few simple but important questions for you:

• Can a 3D machine control system work reliably in a clay-kaolin quarry environment?
• Will operators find the system intuitive enough to use in real production, not just tests?
• Can you keep your existing planning and design workflows and still benefit from the new technology?
• What kind of productivity and accuracy improvements can you realistically expect?

In practice, you need a trial that fits into your normal production days, not a laboratory experiment, and that gives you clear lessons for a possible full-scale rollout.

Approach

The VKV clay-kaolin pilot was set up to test machine control in real quarry conditions, step by step.

Quarry survey & digital design

You start from a solid base:

• Surveying the active and planned working areas of the VKV quarry.
• Preparing digital design surfaces and linework for benches, ramps, stockpiles or pads.
• Checking that coordinate systems and elevations are consistent with existing survey practice.

These files then become the reference for the machine control system in the field.

3D machine control setup & operator guidance

A selected machine in the quarry is equipped with a 3D machine control system:

• GNSS or total station-based sensors track the position of the bucket or blade in real time.
• The in-cab display shows the operator where to cut or fill to match the digital design.
• Basic training helps operators understand how to use guidance views and alarms without slowing down production.

The goal is to keep the system as simple and helpful as possible so you can see how it fits daily work.

Monitoring, adjustment & technical support

During the pilot, you monitor how the system performs:

• Spot checks and surveys confirm whether final surfaces match the designs more closely.
• Feedback from operators highlights what is useful and where adjustments are needed.
• Technical support keeps the hardware and software running and fine-tunes settings where required.

By the end of the pilot period, you have practical information on how machine control affects accuracy, rework and coordination between planning, surveying and operations.

Results & value

From this kind of pilot project at VKV, you gain:

• A better understanding of how 3D machine control behaves in clay-kaolin quarry conditions.
• Real examples of benches, ramps or pads built closer to design with fewer corrections.
• Operator feedback on what works well and what training or interface changes would help.
• A clearer basis for deciding whether, how and where to extend machine control across your quarry fleet.

For the VKV quarry, the pilot was completed within the agreed timeframe and to the satisfaction of the client, demonstrating that a 3D machine control system can support more precise and predictable excavation in an industrial minerals operation.