Data acquisition costs mainly borne by expensive vibrator machines (i.e., deployment, operations, and maintenance) can be regarded as the main impediment to wide application of seismic methods in the mining industry. Here, we show that drill bit noise can be used to image the shallow subsurface when it is optimally acquired and processed. Drill bit imaging methods have many applications in small scale near-surface projects, such as those in mining exploration and geotechnical investigation.