Clutch Swivel
A cool story about the HDD market tooling evolution with an awesome service level twist:
On Tuesday, October 18 / 16 a large, international HDD contractor contacted our office looking for tooling assistance for an upcoming project. We’ve designed, built, and tested numerous 220 Ton and 165 Ton Hex Slide, Flow Through , Locking swivels (our in house shortened terminology is ‘Clutch’ swivel) over the past few years; but this customer request was a little different.
In order to rig up this Clutch swivel on the rig and to fit between the planetary gears while moving up and down on the track, there was only an allowable maximum OD of 9 ¾” for clearance. Based on the mud pressures (up to 600 psi) and torque loads required, we began discussions of designing a new 80 Ton Clutch swivel.
On Wednesday evening, October 19 / 16 the design process was completed (we designed this flow through swivel based on similar proven methods utilized on the larger flow through swivels).
