How Are Drill Rig Companies Are Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Latest Technology / Billie Fleming

drill rig companies Much like other industries, drill rig companies are not immune from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. With respect to a report made by Reuters, the industry response to the drastic slump of energy prices and plummeting demand for oil and natural gas includes rolling out intermittent health checks for critical staff to help in ensuring that oil rigs, refineries, pipelines, and many other similar vital infrastructure will have sustained manpower to run and operate.

Alongside this, major players in the industry, particularly those that are involved in oil and natural gas production are putting pressure on people in power and authority to suspend or waive for the time being a few regulations that are obviously creating an adverse impact to the industry as a whole. This would include those regulations that concern environmental safety and the workplace.

Drill Rig Companies: What are the Repercussions of the Pandemic to Oil and Gas Industry?

As of this writing, over 200, 000 unlucky souls have become infected by the new novel coronavirus, which at the moment is continuously wreaking havoc of unimaginable proportions around the globe. In the U.S. alone, there are over 6,000 confirmed cases of infection where it has now touched all 50 states.

On a worldwide scale, the virus is to blame for more than 8,720 deaths. With this, oil refineries and drill rig companies will not be able to operate if there is no manpower to deploy on onsite teams. Since they are usually put in close quarters, it further increases the risk for a localized outbreak of COVID-19.

In the Marathon oil refinery, which has its base in California, only a single confirmed case of coronavirus was reported. This has prompted the company to have potentially exposed workers to be offsite.

While it is a relief to know that as of this moment not a single energy facility in the country was forced to shut due to the pandemic, the vast majority of these drilling rig firms are putting on their respective contingency plans, just in case. For instance, Royal Dutch Shell requested their Louisiana refineries salaried staff to start shadowing hourly plant operators to anticipate learning fast how to run units, just in case they will need to.

Meanwhile, Exxon management would only let highly trained and skilled operators gain access to control rooms at its Houston, Texas, Baytown plant, instructing them also to maintain social distancing at 6 feet away from each other.

There are also a handful of oil drill rig companies that are taking into account delegating small crews to help out in keeping their refinery plants running even when there is an ongoing outbreak. Those workers are not supposed to have their exit from the affected facility but only after the lapse of the outbreak.

Energy Drill Rig Companies Are Demanding Regulatory Waivers and the Suspension of the Jones Act

Even when shale drillers suffered a big blow from declining prices of energy, these companies are adamant in saying that government bailout is not exactly what they want to have at the moment. What they are seeking instead is an effort to push for the suspension of the Jones Act as a way to help in alleviating shipping costs related to processing and bringing their product offerings to the public for consumption.

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Why Using A 3D Scanner is the Right Decision

3D, Information Technology, Latest Technology / Billie Fleming

A three-dimensional scanner has transformed an assortment of businesses, from footwear design up to supercar production. Regulated light scanners go accurately and quickly. Sometimes called gray or even pink light scanners, configured mild 3D scanners browse an item many times from each angle and change a physical item within seconds to a virtual style. Allow me to share five reasons to utilize 3D scanning in the field of manufacturing.

3D Scanner Benefits

1. Save Time during the Design Phase

Maybe an item requires a brand-new component created based on prior items. The requirement to reverse engineer a brand-new item aligns well with the abilities of the constructed mild 3D scanner. It can enter every nook as well as the cranny of current products as well as supply the accurate aspects of the room where any new component should fit.

3D scanners additionally save more time when a modification should be made to a present style. When the width of the automotive part or a ring must be altered, 3D scanners function quicker compared to hand drawn computations.

2. Makes the Prototype Method Faster

Creating an exact prototype usually calls for many attempts. Because of 3D structured mild scanning, this procedure could be expedited. 3D scanning might lessen the amount of model cycles needed during the style and production method. The scanner not just measures the cross sections or identifies places where an item is warped, though it also saves information connected to the scan. Once the right time comes to check a brand-new model of the model, evaluating model data is easy and fast.

3. Comprehensive and fast Quality Control

3D scanners are exactly accurate and beneficial that big world museums are beginning to depend on them to protect several of the most prominent artifacts from a wide range of cultures. Also, the scanner verifies the makeup of the volume and the substance of the object. These very same advantages turn to manufacturing consumers. It is possible to examine the quality of layout, stability, and scale of a merchandise within millimeters of precision. 3D scanning causes it to be possible to check the whole design of the produced product with the first CAD style and find deviations immediately by exhibiting the information in a 3D full deviation style map.

4. Capability for Parts Remanufacturing

When it is important to reproduce a part, which originated prior to computer aided design or CAD software program was there, 3D scanners allow it to be possible to create exact reproductions. Simply check an old part and then make use of Reverse Engineering applications to make a CAD design. The scanner may then be applied to evaluate the recently generated model to the scan of the outdated portion to check out for accuracy.

5. Not difficult to Compare Models to Produced Products

Another benefit of structured mild 3D resulting scans is the potential to evaluate the as designed design to the as built type of a service. Making sure that the first perspective came to fruition as anticipated is a crucial metric of success. A lot more than value management, comparing layouts to manufactured items guarantees that the produced item will fit as necessary, for instance, in a car. Likewise, this cross check may see a jeweler whether a jewel is going to fit in a pendant or even ring.

Structured light 3D scanning is a precise and efficient way of manufacturing items which do the job, as necessary. Whether it is an artistic restoration or maybe engineering prototype, the tasks employed in 3D scanning require accuracy and quality, and structured mild scanning provides.

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Abrasive Waterjet Machine’s Role in Precision Cutting for Medical Equipments

Latest Technology, Medical Supplies / Billie Fleming

As young technology that it is, the evolution of abrasive waterjet machines reached a point where they can already offer a substantial benefit to manufacturing firms that are catering to the production of in-demand and most sought after surgical instruments and a wide array of other medical applications.

With their ability to hold positioning accuracy reaching to ±0.001″ and complemented by continuous technological breakthroughs in micronozzle production, a growing number of manufacturing firms in the medical instrument sphere now employ the use of waterjet machines to further strengthen their operations and productivity.

medical equipment

Contrary to public perception, it is not water that carries out the actual cutting work on industrial waterjet cutters. Rather, water acts as a delivery vehicle for the tiny abrasive particles such as garnet. They are being accelerated to supersonic speeds. This way they can deliver a highly productive cutting work by virtue of erosion, much in the same how a grinding process works.

Beneficial to Medical Manufacturers

Increased level of productivity is among the chief benefits a manufacturing firm is bound to enjoy if they will incorporate the use of abrasive waterjet machines in their operations. This is completely contrasting to other traditional metal-cutting methods we have. Water jet cutting substantially offers us a considerably higher rate of cutting speeds but requiring a lesser amount of time for setting things up.

The waterjet process is seamless and a straight-forward one. As for the waterjet operator, he may only need to upload a drawing of the part together with all the specifics and required tolerances. The onboard software will then take on the calculation of tool paths. After this, it will carry out the cutting data. The convenience of setup and the rate of cutting speed is giving us good reasons why this qualifies as an excellent alternative method to using for prototyping applications and large component production runs.

After some time that waterjet technology was first introduced to the world, there is no way that abrasive waterjet machines will be able to deliver tolerances, a requisite of many medical applications.

This is not true anymore for parts that need tolerances below 0.002”. Even for work that requires a high level of precision, this material cutting method can deliver substantial benefit and does so by cutting finished near-net parts with the use of an ancillary process. This also applies to part geometries that go beyond the flat dimensions produced by abrasive water jet cutting, even though the recent progress of bevel-cutting nozzle accessories broadened the breadth of geometries that this material cutting method can produce outright.

Compared to many other material cutting practices, an abrasive waterjet is a handful of key advantages. Laser discharge machining and laser technologies tend to produce heat-affected zones in and around the workpiece you are trying to cut.

HAZ (heat-affected zones) induces surface hardening and in a way alters the chemical attributes of the material. Abrasive waterjet is a qualified cold cutting process, and being such it offers users immunity from such effects. It is also an environmentally superior alternative as opposed to photo-chemical etching. Normally, this would be leaving behind a trail of hazardous or toxic waste materials.

Last, but not the least, abrasive waterjet machines would only apply a small amount of force on the material or the area you are trying to cut through. This allows for seamless and convenient cutting of delicate features that is otherwise very difficult, costly, or impossible to produce if you will only employ the use of traditional cutting methods.

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