Michelle Carey, global manager - integrated solutions with Imdex's REFLEX Technology business, said release of 25 IQ Logger prototypes into the market earlier this year brought a swift reaction from geologists who applied the new system to vital drill core structural and orientation readings.

One said: "The new IQ Logger immediately became an integral part of our daily oriented core analysis and QAQC procedures due to its ease of use, precision, and rapid visual feedback via dynamic stereonet analysis."

According to Terralogic Exploration's exploration technology manager Chris Gallagher, the IQ Logger "has allowed us to collect literally 10-times the structural data over traditional measurement systems and at a much higher quality".

"In my opinion, it is an essential tool for any drill based structural study," Gallagher said.

That level of endorsement has not been uncommon since the formal Reflex introduction of IQ Logger at Indaba in South Africa in February.

"We had to almost immediately double the fleet and that still wasn't enough," Carey said of the initial 25-unit market injection.

"We are now aiming to have hundreds in the market over the next six months."

While the REFLEX team intended to use feedback from the prototype deployment phase to inform refinement of the IQLogger 2.0 product design, demand for the initial version and the speed of uptake of its more advanced features has led to incremental design change to the original while parallel development of version 2.0 continues.

"For me the biggest surprise in uptake has been the willingness of companies using televiewers to adopt this product in parallel or in some cases replacing the use of downhole televiewer data," Carey said.

"Also most encouragingly for me is the interest we've received for the full REFLEX suite: the IQ Logger plus ACT [core orientation device] plus a survey tool, and the HUB [REFLEXHUB-IQ] because clients have seen the strong value proposition of all of them together.

"One feature the HUB introduces is the ability to manage structural code lists yourself. This was one of the biggest requests we got from the initial trials so it has been great to roll that out to users."

REFLEXHUB-IQ is central to Imdex's STRUCTURAL-IQ solution. The award winning cloud-based Hub stores core orientation quality control data obtained from the REFLEX ACT core orientation tool, survey measurement data from REFLEX's leading survey instrumentation, and structural data from the REFLEX IQ-Logger.

"We are typically seeing users checking the initial results they're getting with the tools to see that they compare well with what they get from their existing approach," Carey said.

"Once that is established it generally shifts to how they maximise the value of the data by integrating with ‘real' survey data for the drill hole.

"People get pretty excited when we show them how we have achieved this with our tools in the REFLEXHUB-IQ. It becomes obvious this is such a massive time saver to be able to do that automatically rather than having to smash files together in excel."

Carey is expecting geologists to start asking more questions about the quality of critical orientation data.

"We have tried to stay ahead of that curve by also putting QA data for our ACT core orientation tool in the REFLEXHUB-IQ," she said.

There will be more developments on that front from REFLEX as the year unfolds.

The group is also about to launch a new structural geology website that will facilitate vital knowledge sharing in what is now a faster changing field of activity and learning.

"We saw the benefit in the site which is not intended as a REFLEX information site per se but more a resource that geologists can use to find best practice information about core orientation and structural geology," Carey said.

REFLEX also has a full calendar of seminars, conference presentations and other knowledge-sharing events ahead, such as a webinar on ‘The future of structural data collection and interpretation', while thought leadership material is available on the Future of Mining content hub at Mining Journal.

"As the market picks up we are seeing a dramatic pick up in the requests for training, both from drillers on our core orientation tools and also geologists with the IQ Logger," Carey said.

"We have been responding to this by not just addressing this with workshops but also specifically a renewed focus on online video content. As an example when we launched the REFLEXHUB-IQ this included 18 online video tutorials to support every component of the training."

On the product development front, Carey said IQ Logger had already given users a platform - and more time - to start getting creative with new applications.

"We have had plenty of people asking about modifying the tool for use in geotechnical logging, something that was already in our thinking," she said.

"We are now pulling together what that would look like, aiming for a release late this year.

"We have also had more creative types figure out how to use the tool for underground face mapping, which is pretty innovative and although something we hadn't considered as a use case, pretty easily achieved."