The blasting engineer is the person who calculates how deep a drill rig needs to drill a hole, how much explosive needs to go into the hole so that there is a safe blast while at the same time breaking the rock sufficiently so it can be loaded by an excavator, taken to be dumped or a crusher, where it is further processed. The Blasting Engineer needs to be sure there is no one near the blast when he or she 'fires' it so no one gets hurt when the rock from the blast comes to rest. Technology and blasting assistants help. The blast has sensors placed around it to record the explosives breaking the rock.
Blasting Engineers in quarries help owners to blast safely so that the materials that are used to make houses, schools, universities, roads, hospitals, soccer stadiums, ports and airports can be obtained.
In open pit mines, blasting engineers make the pit a safe place to go while allowing the pit to go deeper to keep costs down by controlling vibration so that pit walls are not adversly affected by blasting operations. Minerals are then extracted from the fragmented rock which go in to manufacture smart phones, wind turbines, solar panels, medicines, medical equipment. I should say that the fragmented rock is crushed and processed further. Blasting can be optimised to minimise the energy required to crush the rock.
To day as you read this on your smartphone, laptop, the metals inside your device got to you with the help of a blasting Engineer. If you are in a building, he or she helped there too. Blasting is the first step in the receipe for turning copper ore into copper wire and rock into concrete
Drilling Engineers in the past used a hammer and a chisel to drill a hole - hit the chisel, rotate it a bit, hit it again with a chisel to create the hole for the blasting engineer to insert the gun powder to break the rock. To day the drilling engineer has a machine to drill the holes for the blasting engineer. Drilling and blasting software is used to position the holes in a safe and efficient postion to minimise drilling and explosive costs, mininimise the environmental impact of the blast whilst at the same to to fragment the rock.
To help the blasting engineer in his work, blasting software such as Rockmatewhich will help make blasting safer and cheaper