We’re always excited when we get to announce new additions to our product lines. We usually launch new products after months of research and development or when we get valuable feedback from our clients. When we launched our RockStar line a few years ago, we were happy to be able to offer drillers a core bit that offered many benefits, including its self-sharpening ability.
At the beginning of the year, we decided to update our popular eGuides so our customers would have the latest and greatest information. We started with our most popular guide on choosing the right core bit and are now in the process of taking each guide and updating its information to represent the many changes that have occurred over the last few years.
Topics: How to choose equipment
Water swivels may not be the first piece of equipment that comes to mind when you think about diamond drilling. The rig, the rods and the core bit would likely pop in first. Yet the water swivel has an integral role to play in the drilling process. In surface drilling, the water swivels are responsible for delivering a sufficient amount of flushing fluid to the bit and for hoisting the drill rods in and out of the bore hole. They need to be reliable and you need to choose one with enough load capacity to do the job.
As we say often in the blog, choosing the right equipment is one of the most important parts of the drilling process. Whether it’s choosing the right core bit, a reaming shell or some other part, there are always many factors to consider before making a choice. When it comes to overshots, there are regular overshots and safety overshots. Let’s look at four good reasons to consider a safety overshot.
Pumps are an essential piece of equipment on a diamond drilling site. They are responsible for getting water to the site and for lubricating the bore hole and flushing drill cuttings. For efficient operations, you will need a pump that will produce the same flow at a given speed, so drillers choose positive displacement pumps. Your pump also needs to be reliable so that operations do not stop. When you need to get a new pump, there are several important questions you need to ask yourself.
Topics: How to choose equipment
When we wrote a blog a little while ago comparing RC drilling to diamond drilling, one of the things that we didn’t mention was that there is little standardization in RC drilling. Unlike diamond drilling, most of the parts that make up a drill string are not compatible with parts from other manufacturers. This means that configuring, or choosing the types of equipment you need, can be complex and difficult.
Picking the right diamond tool for your drilling project is a topic we’ve covered before in a lot of detail. We’ve written blogs and guides on how to choose the right core bit and the right configuration for that core bit. Oftentimes, our guides include a matrix selection chart to help drillers choose the right core bit depending on the hardness of the ground on Mohs scale.
Subscribers who have been reading this blog for a while know that I am a big fan of drilling additives. When you are drilling in difficult conditions, drilling fluid additives can really help improve drilling performance. There are additives that are great for most conditions and other that were developed for specific ground conditions like sand or clay.
When I talk about new products in this blog, I hate to overpromise. I like to think I provide fair information about what a new product does and why it was developed. The DiscovOre is a new core barrel system that I think really is something different… maybe even revolutionary. It addresses two big issues for drillers, safety and productivity.
One of the most challenging ground formations for diamond drilling is fractured ground. When drilling in highly fractured or broken ground, you run the risk of hitting a void or large fracture and having your drill water escape through that fault. Similarly, in an underground drilling environment, groundwater is often unexpectedly encountered in the drill hole. Extremely high flow rates and pressures are not uncommon.