Dyno Nobel Navus handheld blaster: design and safety notes for drill‑and‑blast teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Dyno Nobel has launched the Navus handheld blaster, a 600 g electronic initiation device designed to trigger blasts via up to 2,500 m of harness wire anywhere on site. The unit extends the company’s electronic initiation range beyond fixed blast boxes, giving engineers more flexibility in complex pit geometries, underground headings and perimeter stand-off locations. For drill-and-blast teams, the compact form factor and long wire support enable wider separation between charge areas and firing points without adding extra infrastructure.
Technical Brief
- Handheld format reduces reliance on fixed firing lines, lowering exposure around traditional blast boxes.
- Portable unit supports relocating firing points to better shield crews from flyrock and overpressure zones.
- Electronic initiation compatibility enables precise timing control, improving vibration management near sensitive infrastructure.
- Reduced hardware footprint simplifies blast site housekeeping, aiding compliance with exclusion-zone and clearance protocols.
- For multi-bench or staggered headings, mobile initiation supports more flexible evacuation and line-of-sight safety planning.
Our Take
Within the 1,398 tag-matched pieces in our database, relatively few ‘Product’ and ‘Safety’ items focus on blasting hardware, so Dyno Nobel’s Navus unit stands out as part of a smaller subset of operational-safety tech rather than project-level risk stories.
A 600 g handheld blaster suggests Dyno Nobel is targeting field crews who are already burdened with radios, tablets and PPE; in practice this kind of weight and form factor tends to improve compliance with electronic initiation protocols compared with bulkier legacy controllers.
Across the 707 Mining stories, most safety coverage is incident- or regulation-led, so a proactive product launch by Dyno Nobel signals that OEMs are increasingly trying to differentiate through ergonomic and human-factor design rather than only through explosive performance or cost per blast hole.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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