Whats the Deepest You Have Ever Been Underground?

[M.D. Holloway]

Few months ago Vash should us how high he has gotten (non-drug related), was wondering how low anyone has ever gotten?

Below are a few pics of me with a few miners at INCO mine in Sudbury Canada taken today. They mine mostly nickel but also pull up gold, silver and copper.

I was there to do a case study on a product I invented. The trial went amazing! Better than expected and we wrote immediate business worth $$$$$! I'm pumped!

I'm the funny looking guy in the middle. We were at 3000 feet down in this pic. We ended up at 3800 feet down and spent about 6 hours down.



Here is another:

[dhoward]

Originally posted by LubeMaster77
We were at 3000 feet down in this pic. We ended up at 3800 feet down and spent about 6 hours down.

Wow.
How many decompression stops did that take?

[legion]

I was in an old copper mine in Hancock, MI last summer. It goes down to something like 9000 feet. It's been disused since the 1940's IIRC (copper prices have kept the mine from being able to be mined profitably). It has something like 2000 levels, and I went down to level 7, which is the lowest level not flooded by Lake Superior.

[bryanthompson]

Why is lubemaster experimenting with lubricants in giant subterannean tunnels?

[red-beard]

Lubricating tunnels? Doesn't seem odd to me...

[dhoward]

Lubricating the tectonic plates so's to avoid the possibility of future earthquakes. "Specialty lube."

Way to go, Lube!!!



Just kidding. I made that up.....

[Don Ro]

I thought you meant underground, economically-speaking.
That idea interests me more 'n more these days.

[id10t]

Depth wise, not much. 50 feet of water pressure, maybe another 50 of dirt/limestone. But waaaay back into the Florida aquifer. Kinda weird looking at your depth gauge and seeing 50 feet, with no way to go up

[RickM]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
Why is lubemaster experimenting with lubricants in giant subterannean tunnels?

Actually his invention encourages production of the natural lubricants from within. A big money saver.

[kach22i]

Some deep caves in the USA and an old WW II military installation in the Czech Republic - deep but nothing comparable to the mines listed.

Which is worse galzillions of stairs or them elevators?

[curlesw]

Dang, those pics freak me out...I gotta go stand outside for a while...

[Seahawk]

I'm a blue sky kind of guy...I was sweating like Rossanne Barr singing the national anthem when I was in Luray Caverns in Virginia, all of 100 feet below top soil. What, inquiring minds want to know, were you doing in that mine?

[M.D. Holloway]

The mines in the states mostly strip land, the mines in Canada bore down deep to get the ore. They transport it up with lifts attached to cables. Think service elevator on roids.

Mines use heavy equipment that abuses the heck out of engine, transmission and hydraulic oil. They also require a bunch of grease for the pins, bushings and bearings.

The mine I was in crushes the rock (they call it muck - which is boulders and wet dirt) into manageabe stones that are trucked to the smelting plant then to the refinery. These crushers are the nastiest things imaginable. The thing has a huge fly wheel and a counter balence weight. The shaft is concentric (think cam shaft and main bearing in you engine) and pushes a plate of steel about 8 inches thick into another plate that is stationary. The first plate is on an angle so the muck falls down and gradually more and more pressure is apllied till the rock is crushed. The force and sound is amazing - even with ear protection. Needless to say, the bearings (two large pillow block bearings, about 4 feet each in dia, and two bearings on the cam about 3.5 feet in dia each) experience incredable stress, contamination and even heat due to the pressures. The fly wheels alone must wiegh 150,000 lbs. The grease that they have been using is a special mine grease from Esso. Their bearings have come dangeruosly close to failing to to increased heating up due in part to ***** grase from Esso. Repalceing the bearings would cost literally millions in lost revenue. They have been just getting by. This is a common problem in the mines by the way as it is in many heavy equipment applications.

I had invented a product the performas like a grease but will actually remove the built up varnish from the bearing surface and also losen any hardened grease. So you purge the bearings during operation with this stuff (called BEARING PURGE) and all this ***** starts pouring out then follow up with our wiz bang grease and watch temeratures drop, amperes drop and eventually bearing replacements drop.

This actually happened today. The operation temperatures of the bearinsg we were studying started to decrease while the bearinsg we were not doing the BEARING PURGE on strated to increase (which was normal). The final thing was the amp reduction. Thats real, tanagable $$$ savings that is directly related to the bottom line.

BTW - I've been pick'n black boogers from my nose all night! Can anyone say black lung?

[M.D. Holloway]

oh ya, this mine alone has about 2000 pieces of construction equipment under ground, not to mention the service lifts that need cable lubricant. The service gargages under ground are like giant arena's without the seats. It is the most amazing thing. They front loaders and dump trucks just like you see outside but they also have tunneling and boring machines that are evil beasts!

[Hugh R]

About a mile deep in the DOE's Nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. A huge salt dome for storing low level and transuranic wastes.

[bryanthompson]

Wow, you really are the lube master. That sounds really cool.

[Jay Auskin]

135 meters (443 feet) the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. Nothing near what you were in but still pretty cool. All on foot, except for the incredibly creepy mine shaft elevator up.

[M.D. Holloway]

Jay - tell me about it. The only time during the day that I got creeped out was on the way back up. It took about 10 minutes to get back up. We stopped at every level to pick up more guys. At one point we were jammed so tight that it was tough to breath. They have to do this everyday but holy***** it was like I was in a Singapore subway! We were pressed really tight together. Of course, one of the guys had to mention that I was a lubrication expert. For the next several minutes I had to endure the obvious and sundrie jokes about my level of expertise and how it would relate to our present situation!

[HardDrive]

I've been in deep.....deep **** with the wife that is.....

[M.D. Holloway]

Hay HardDrive, Got Lube?