The talk of top drives got me thinking this is a good group to ask.

• How often does your top drive stop working due to mechanical failure?
• Of those failures is it normally an electric motor or a main thrust bearing?

TIA

And for offshore guys.

Do you ever use your rotary table? Does it have a purpose on a modern offshore rig other than backup to the top drive?

And one more for your consideration.

Do you have brand preference of top drive? If so why?


NOV dominates the market but is it because their product is better or is it the fact that they have integrated all their components into a single package and sold everything at one time?

In the old days a rig would be put together pc by pc but NOV bought a company or companies that make each pc and began tackling the market in a new way by selling a complete rig package. This was smart, but do all the parts work well or are there weak links?

and and and ..one last question.....

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ?

African or from Eurabia?

European or African?

Huh? I... I don't know that.

aaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhh .......................

I haven't worked on a rig since I was 18, and the rigs I worked on were rotary table triples, so I can't answer many questions about brands of top drives and problems. I own 1/2 of and run a small oil company and we've been drilling in the Permian continuously for the past 5 years with a combination of rotary table doubles and triples and top drive super singles and doubles. I just look at the drilling reports, but we've never had any significant issues with the top drives on the rigs we have contracted. We use top drive rigs exclusively now as they've proven to be much more time efficient.

I ask because NOV, Aker, Canrig, and others are all trying to build top drives now with sensorized components to warn of premature failure.

But yet when I ask users about their top drives they all seem to say that the current models rarely break down.

Although we operate in the U.S., we use Canadian rigs that undergo intense inspections at prescribed intervals. We've noticed a huge improvement in rig repair down time that much more than offsets the increased day rate of the rigs compared to U.S. drillers. I don't know what all is involved in these inspections, but the goal is to identify and replace any wear items, so that they are replaced before failure. I would guess that includes components of the top drive. If the top drive mfgs can make the equipment so that it is easier to inspect wear itmes, I could see how that would be beneficial for the drilling companies that take PM very serious.

When I worked on a rig (for a U.S. drilling company), we would replace catlines, winch lines, and slip drill line before failure. We would also change fluids in engines, before failure. Otherwise, I don't recall replacing or servicing anything prior to failure. We would have a welder out after every rig up to fix any cracked metal noticed during rig down or rig up, but rotary table components, drawworks components, mud pump components, and just about everything that wouldn't kill someone if it failed was used until it failed.

Your rig hands play an important role in keeping the topdrive running too. If they aren't using rig service to inspect properly you could be down for who knows how long.
We mainly used the rotary table to make up BHA if we had to do it over the hole.

quote:

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Your rig hands play an important role in keeping the topdrive running too. If they aren't using rig service to inspect properly you could be down for who knows how long.
We mainly used the rotary table to make up BHA if we had to do it over the hole.

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Winner.

I work for the NOV division that makes the Top Drives, Drill Pipe, and other accessories. Whether you like NOV or not, we have the most diverse connections and grades for all of our products. We pretty much let the customer dictate to us what we need to make. As crazy as this sounds, we make the best products when it comes to Drill Pipe and drilling accessories and it isn't even close. VAM is almost gone and they were trash anyway and RDT has shut down. Those were our two main US competitors. We own 80% of the worldwide market share.

In my experience, no, you're not seeing much major mechanical failure in top drives these days. We will still accumulate down time on our TDSs, but it will be from small things, hydraulic hose failure, IBOP issues, saver subs, tong dies, etc. etc..

There are such evolved preventative maintenance schedules for these machines, that major failure is uncommon.

Using a rotary offshore? On 6th and 7th generation rigs, there are few situations in which you need to spin your rotary. Hell, we hardly use our cat heads.

Thank Pete Miller - the man is a genius when it comes to building up companies.

Miss Uncle Pete.

The Top Drives were one of the more reliable pieces of equipment in my experience. I think we had one bigger failure in my three years offshore and some other minor issues that were easy fixes. PMs done very frequently though. Rotary table used on ocassion to make up or break out assemblies that had more interesting components.