Blast hole drilling for open-pit mines and quarries. 3" to 8" bench holes, modern Epiroc rigs and MSHA 48 crews, with extra capacity when your pit needs it.
Mines and quarries need holes drilled to pattern, depth and diameter, shift after shift. XCEL is a blast hole drilling contractor for open-pit metals mines and aggregate quarries, running Epiroc SmartROC, FlexiROC and PowerROC rigs on 3" to 8" holes.
Every employee holds MSHA 48, OSHA 30 and CPR/First Aid, and we've kept a perfect safety record since 2015. When you need capacity for a campaign, or a rig goes down, we can mobilize.
Bench blast holes up to 8", drilled to your blast design (pattern, burden, spacing, depth and diameter) with disciplined collaring and depth control. Your blasting team handles loading and shooting.
Pre-split, production, development and other drilling our Epiroc fleet supports, drilled to your mine plan, up to 8" in diameter.
Extra rigs and crews when production targets rise, your own rigs are down or a campaign has to finish fast.
Topcon GNSS RTK hole layout and as-drilled positions.
Hole accuracy drives the blast. Collars that wander or depths that drift change burden and spacing, and that shows up as oversize, uneven floors and extra secondary work. We drill consistent holes and keep clear drill logs, so your blast design gets the results it was built for.
Owning every rig your pit might ever need is expensive. Contract drilling matches drilling capacity to the plan, not the other way around. Operators bring XCEL in when:
A self-contained drilling spread: rigs, tooling, operators, fuel and service support, GNSS layout and daily reporting. You keep control of the blast design and the pit plan. We deliver the holes.
Mine sites bring haul trucks, highwalls, dust and MSHA oversight. Our crews arrive trained, follow your site rules and hold stop-work authority on every shift.
Yes. Every XCEL employee holds MSHA Part 48 training, plus OSHA 30 and CPR/First Aid, and 15 team members also hold OSHA 510. Crews arrive ready for mine and quarry sites, follow your site rules and hold stop-work authority. Our record: zero recordables and a TRIR of 0 since 2015.
We drill 3" to 8" holes for quarry and open-pit mining, up to 8" in diameter. Epiroc DTH rigs handle larger diameters and deeper holes; PowerROC tophammer rigs are fast in hard rock at smaller diameters. Tell us the pattern, depth and diameter in your blast design and we'll match the rig and tooling.
Bench drilling to support blasting operations, plus pre-split, production, development and other drilling our Epiroc fleet supports, up to 8" in diameter. We also provide supplemental and campaign drilling when production targets rise or your own rigs are down, with GNSS layout and hole-by-hole logs.
No. We drill the blast hole pattern to your design (pattern, burden, spacing, depth and diameter), and your blasting team handles loading and shooting. Disciplined collaring and depth control keep burden and spacing where the design puts them, which means better fragmentation, more even floors and less secondary work.
Yes. We add rigs for development campaigns, seasonal peaks at aggregate operations, or to cover a rig that's down while parts are on the way. You get a self-contained spread (rigs, tooling, operators, fuel and service support, GNSS layout and daily reporting), and we coordinate rapid mobilization.
Send the blast design and production targets. We respond to every quote request within 24 hours.