Patent Issued for Handling Device for Drill Rods and So-Called Top Drive Having Such a Handling Device (USPTO 9376873)
By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Journal of Engineering -- From Alexandria, Virginia, VerticalNews journalists report that a patent by the inventors Moss, Johannes (Nordhorn, DE); Schmidt, Heiko (Munster, DE); Gro.beta.e Veldmann, Gerhard (Bad Bentheim, DE), filed on November 19, 2012, was published online on June 28, 2016.
The patent's assignee for patent number 9376873 is Bentec GmbH Drilling & Oilfield Systems (Bad Bentheim, DE).
News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The invention relates to a handling device for drill rods for deep boreholes, e.g. for crude oil and natural gas exploration. The term 'pipe handler' has become established in technical terminology for such a handling device, and accordingly the term 'pipe handler' is used in the following synonymously with the expression 'handling unit for drill rods'.
"A pipe handler is part of a so-called top drive, that is to say the vertically moving drive unit in the mast of a drilling rig which sets the drill rods into rotational movement for the drilling process by means of a drive assembly, usually an electric motor, which is contained within the drive unit. For this purpose, the top drive is divided into a fixed and a rotatable unit. The fixed unit comprises the drive assembly. The element which can be rotated by the drive assembly is the pipe handler. The units of the pipe handler are supplied via a rotary hydraulic union between fixed and rotatable part of the top drive, namely in that a pressurized hydraulic fluid is applied to the pressure cylinder and the like, for example to move so-called elevator brackets or to activate holding tongs for drill rods provided on a so-called torque arm.
"A swivel movement capability is provided especially for the elevator brackets of the pipe handler, as the elevator brackets (usually two) carry a so-called rod elevator at the ends thereof in order to remove drill rod elements from a store and to feed the removed drill rod element to the holding tongs at the end of the torque arm.
"A certain quantity of drill rod elements is normally held available vertically next to or on the mast of the drilling rig for storage purposes, and a so-called fingerboard, which is located on the mast in the region of the top end of the stored drill rod elements, is provided for this purpose. An additional or alternative storage position for at least one drill rod element is the so-called mouse hole. Up to now, the removal of drill rod elements from their storage position and also in the opposite direction, namely the depositing of drill rod elements in a storage position, has been carried out under manual control. For this purpose, the top drive is moved to an appropriate vertical position in the mast which enables drill rod elements to be removed or deposited. As soon as the top drive is in this position, the or each elevator bracket is swiveled and a drill rod element is collected or deposited by means of the rod elevator.
"With regard to a problem which existed up to that point that essential control operations for initiating and concluding such handling processes were left substantially to the attention of the operating personnel, devices and methods with which a fully automatic monitoring of the pipe handler and/or of the top drive with pipe handler is possible have been proposed in
"DE 10 2009 039 022 A. In particular, a possible way of detecting a position of the at least one elevator bracket is specified. DE 10 2009 039 022 A is expressly included in the disclosure content of the present description, e.g. with regard to the electrical and hydraulic supply and control of the top drive explained therein. Further technical background of the relevant prior art, albeit only general in scope, can be seen from U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,745 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,800,968."
As a supplement to the background information on this patent, VerticalNews correspondents also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "An object of the invention described below consists in specifying a further embodiment of means for detecting a position of the at least one elevator bracket.
"According to the invention, this object is achieved with the characteristics of claim 1. For this purpose, with a handling unit for drill rods having at least one elevator bracket which can be swiveled particularly by means of a tilt arm under the influence of at least one actuating element, and means for detecting a position of the at least one elevator bracket, at least one valve and at least one connecting member which can be moved by a movement of the tilt arm is provided. The or each valve functions as means for detecting the position of the or each elevator bracket and is part of a switching control circuit which continues outside the handling unit. The at least one connecting member is provided for the at least one valve, wherein the or each valve opens the hydraulic switching control circuit when the connecting member is in a first position or location, and wherein the or each valve closes the hydraulic switching control circuit when the connecting member is in a second position or location. As the respective position or location of the connecting member corresponds to a displacement of the at least one elevator bracket, position information regarding a displacement of the at least one elevator bracket is provided based on the closed or open hydraulic switching control circuit.
"An advantage of the invention consists in that only one valve or one group of valves, for example two valves, and the part of a hydraulic switching control circuit in which the or each valve is located is required on the handling unit side as means for detecting a position of the at least one elevator bracket. The handling unit/pipe handler is the rotatable part of a top drive, and a rotary union is provided for decoupling between the rotatable and the fixed part. The hydraulic switching control circuit can be routed via this rotary union. As the or each valve opens or closes the hydraulic switching control circuit depending on a location or position of the connecting member, a pressure which can be sensed in the switching control circuit constitutes a measure of a position or displacement of the at least one elevator bracket. The hydraulic switching control circuit is therefore conceptually simple and the or each valve of the handling unit effects a transmission of a location or position of the respective connecting member and therefore a transmission of a basic displacement of the at least one elevator bracket in one state of the hydraulic switching control circuit. Pressure losses, for example, or similar, which can influence or falsify a detection of the position of the at least one elevator bracket, can be easily kept in check in such a simple switching control circuit. At the very least, a neutral position of the or each elevator bracket, which is also referred to in the following as zero position, can be detected by means of the or each valve, the or each associated moving connecting member and the switching control circuit which is influenced thereby. The zero position of the or each elevator bracket is a position in which the elevator brackets are usually suspended vertically, or at any rate a position of the elevator brackets in which a vertical movement of the top drive in the drilling mast is possible without collisions being able to occur, in particular of the or of each elevator bracket or of the tilt arm with parts of the drilling mast or objects located there. Such a position or displacement is referred to below as a collision-free position.
"Advantageous embodiments of the invention are the subject matter of the dependent claims. Counter-references used here refer to the further development of the subject matter of the main claim by the features of the respective dependent claims; they are not to be understood as a renunciation of the achievement of independent, objective protection for the combination of characteristics of the referenced dependent claims. Furthermore, with regard to a setting out of the claims, when a characteristic is specified in more detail in a subsequent claim, it must be assumed in each case that no restriction of this kind is present in the preceding claims."
For additional information on this patent, see: Moss, Johannes; Schmidt, Heiko; Gro.beta.e Veldmann, Gerhard. Handling Device for Drill Rods and So-Called Top Drive Having Such a Handling Device. U.S. Patent Number 9376873, filed November 19, 2012, and published online on June 28, 2016. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=9376873.PN.&OS=PN/9376873RS=PN/9376873
Keywords for this news article include: Energy, Oil & Gas, Bentec GmbH Drilling & Oilfield Systems.
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