Blasting: Blast holes are drilled into the ground and filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. This breaks the rock up enough for the huge shovels to load it into the humongous trucks. Electric shovels powered by a two-inch thick cord load the rock into the trucks. Some of the trucks have a carrying capacity of 320 tons.

Crushing: Haul trucks dump the ore into a primary crusher, which breaks the ore into pieces of eight inches or less. The primary crushers can then a) send the ore to a secondary crusher, or b) pile the ore into a stockpile.

Grinding: Rotating mills grind the ore into powder. The mine has two types of mills - SAG and ball. Semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mills use eight-inch diameter balls and larger pieces of ore to break up the smaller pieces. When the rocks are three-eighths inch or smaller, they are sent to the ball mills, where three-eighths inch steel balls grind them into a powder.

Concentrating: Water and the ore powder are mixed with milk of lime, a frothing agent, and a collector chemical. As it mixes, bubbles carry the copper minerals to the edge of the flotation tank. The bubbles break as they flow over the edge. The copper is again ground and put through another flotation process. Material that sinks in the first flotation is put through tow more flotation cells, and the remainder (whatever does not float), called "tailings," is disposed of.