Drilled by day, analysed by night. Fast, reliable classification of every metre — in Leapfrog and on the dashboard by morning.
Aurenne Group Mining (AGM) runs a GERDA robot fitted with an Evident Vanta M Series pXRF directly on chip trays from RC and AC drilling at their Mt Ida Project. The robot runs day and night — a field assistant loads the trays, and every metre is analysed. That throughput created a new problem: a continuous stream of geochemical data with no automated way to process it, interpret it, and put it in front of geologists. AGM needed drilling data collected in a systematic, reproducible, and QAQC-compliant manner, delivering reliable, fast, fit-for-purpose interpretations — accessible to the whole team through their 3D software. There was also a genuine geological challenge: two felsic units, near-identical in chips, needed to be told apart — and pathfinder elements mapped — with only one of them hosting mineralisation.
We implemented ZAP Connect — a fully automated workflow linked directly to a shared folder with AGM. Data is collected by the GERDA robot via the mounted Evident Vanta M Series pXRF and automatically sent to the AGM database and the shared folder. GeoZap scans the folder every two minutes; as soon as a change is detected, new data is classified and the results are pushed straight back to the AGM database. No manual handling. No bottleneck between the robot and the geologist. What is drilled during the day is analysed and classified overnight — geologists walk in each morning with every metre interpreted and ready to model. Classified results land in the AGM database as a CSV, linked directly to Leapfrog — feeding fast, reliable 3D geological models. GeoZap also provides a dashboard platform where geologists see results within minutes of collection — downhole strip logs, geochemical plots (2D and ternary diagrams), and a built-in 3D viewer for quick interrogation. The time between data collection and geological interpretation is cut from days to minutes. To build AGM’s classification model, GeoZap geologists worked closely with the AGM team, reviewing geology across RC chip trays and diamond core photos to ground-truth every decision. We first built a regolith classifier, separating colluvium from upper saprolite, lower saprolite, and saprock. We then built a lithological classifier — successfully discriminating the lithological units and specifically the two felsic units, including the one hosting mineralisation, a distinction that’s practically impossible to make consistently from chips alone.
We integrated the colour hex values produced by Imago (Seequent) imagery to help separate colluvium from upper and lower saprolite — a good example of how data from other scanners and sensors can be folded into a single, integrated classification workflow. Technology partners: GERDA · Evident Vanta · Imago (Seequent)
pXRF successfully reproduced the main sedimentary stratigraphy across five drillholes, with strong agreement between the geochemical classes, HyLogger mineralogy and published geological interpretation.
pXRF instruments now used 2x more often — with faster, more consistent classification feeding directly into 3D geological models