Contract manufacturer Dan Cotrino, COO of Rockwell Precision (Houston, TX), said that his company is delivering more components for use in offshore drilling, such as tooling, motion compensation equipment, spherical blowout preven- ters (BOP) and valve bodies. However, they mix that work with directional drilling components and blocks used in hydraulic fracturing for land-based rigs because the machining equip- ment he needs to produce oil and gas components does not differ greatly whether it is land or sea-based equipment. There are some differences though. “On the offshore side, the parts are larger,” Cotrino said. Harder materials that are more durable are another difference between sea and land, mainly in duplex materials. These include stainless steel with an Inconel inlay for grooves in piping and couplings, requiring high cutting forces. Bruce Cates, regional manager for Absolute Machine
Setting up for hard metal pocket to be machined.
Tools (Lorain, OH), the supplier of the YouJi machine tools used by Rockwell Precision, agreed that a key difference
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