Mining falls into 4 categories: underground, open surface (pit), placer, and in-situ mining. The type of materials that a mining operation is trying to extract and the mining techniques they are using to exact those minerals directly informs the types of mining tools that are used.
Usually a basic method for surface and underground mining:
- Extraction. Extraction consists of digging, drilling, or blasting into the earth to extract minerals.
- Material handling. Material handling consists of sorting through materials, sending target minerals to a processing site, and sending irrelevant materials to a waste area.
- Material processing. Material processing is where minerals go to be smelted, crushed, grinded, or refined, converting the minerals into finished products for distribution.
