work,” Cotrino said. “We do a lot of our spherical BOPs with that machine, as well as pistons, adapter rings, locking rings, and valve bodies—all for offshore.” He also owns a smaller YV1200ATC+C with live tooling and YV1600ATC without live tooling.
A key difference that Cotrino has observed since the 2010 spill is the increasing amount of nondestructive testing of subsea components and the witnessing of those tests. They use primarily ultrasonic testing, magnetic particle testing, and liquid penetrant testing at different manufacturing phases. He reported that a third party must witness tests for practically every phase of the process.
“All of the blow-out preventers in the deep sea are going to be changed out.”
Richard Estes, corporate account
manager, oil and gas for Okuma America Corp. (Charlotte, NC), deals with both major oil fi eld equipment sup- pliers and small contract manufacturing shops. “Since the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, all of the BOPs in the deep sea are going to be changed out,” Estes said. “They are all going to be redesigned.” Although each company will have its own, unique design for BOPs, some of the new elements are common to all. These include much larger physical size, newer, more exotic materials, and more stringent machining accuracies. “Tolerances that once were measured in millimeters are going to microns,” he said. Surface fi nishes were largely ignored in the past. Today certain fea- tures have fi nishes that are found in the aerospace industry.
He noted that tricky devices like BOPs and downhole instruments are
future challenges to machining as they become larger and use ever more exotic materials. “Downhole instruments are now made of titanium with very complicated structures, such as holes with angles that intersect other holes,” Estes said. “Some