Energy Innovations
Tooling Up for Fluid-End Machining
Directional drilling, or fracking, for oil and natural gas layered within shale deposits is possibly the hottest trend in today’s energy industry. Critical to that drilling process, especially for natural gas, are fluid ends that regulate liquid solutions as they are pumped into a well. So as more wells are drilled, the demand for fluid ends continues to surge. And magnifying that demand is the fact that the lifespan of a fluid end, at most, is a couple of weeks, or in some instances only a few days. Fluid ends are big vessels made completely from solid blocks of steel, and they
require huge amounts of machining. Milling, drilling and threading are the major machining operations within the three main phases of processing a fluid end—cut- ting and cubing, rough machining and finish machining.
Demand for the component is rising because of increased drilling and the component’s short lifespan.
Fluid ends require huge amounts of machining—milling, drilling and threading—to give them the com- plex contours, numerous orifices and finish required to pump into a well the fluids needed for fracking.
Fluid ends pose several machining challenges, including raw material scale,
varying depths-of-cut and long tool overhangs during milling operations. While in drilling and threading operations, holes can measure up to 8" (203 mm) in diameter and are extremely long—some taking 40 minutes in the cut to complete. Plus, they typically intersect with three to five crossholes, much like on automotive engine blocks. It is for these machining challenges that tooling companies, such as Seco, have turned their focus to fluid ends and have developed tooling systems specifically for optimizing each of the three phases of processing those components.
Don Halas Threading and Grooving Product Manager
Scott Turner Drilling Product Manager Seco Tools Troy, MI
Energy Manufacturing 2013 71
Photos courtesy Seco Tools
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