posted by Rod McCoremick, Blog author, Fordia Powered by Epiroc
8 de octubre de 2020
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. Usually, the number of pounds a water swivel is able to lift is included in a part of the product name. We have recently changed the names of our water swivels to make it easier for our customers to choose the right one. As most readers know, we have published a few blogs and guides about the importance of choosing the right equipment, so a blog on picking the right water swivel should come as no surprise. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on water swivels for surface drilling.
Drilling shallow holes
Previously, we offered a water swivel called the 5K. The “5K” referred to the 5,000-pound capacity that it claimed to have, meaning that it could hoist up to 5,000 pounds of drill rods. As we were performing tests on our line of water swivels, we learned that this water swivel was actually able to hoist much more – up to 14,000 pounds or almost triple the expected weight.
In terms of bore hole depth, when drilling in N size, a driller could go up to 840 meters in depth, and in H size, that bore hole could go as deep as 558 meters.
Since N is a very popular size for drilling, it could be possible for a driller to use the 5K model for most of his drilling needs. So, we decided to simply change the name of the 5K to the Shallow water swivel. There would be no confusion about why the 5K could actually hoist 14K pounds of drill rods.
Drilling deep holes
While most drilling projects in N size could be covered with the Shallow model, what about deeper holes or holes in H size that needed to be deeper than 558 meters? The Deep water swivel was designed for those types of drilling projects. This new design weighs half of what the older 25K water swivel model weighs, but has an impressive 26,000-pound capacity. The Deep model is great for N size bore holes up to 1,560 meters in depth and for H size holes up to 1,036 meters in depth.
This review of our water swivel line led to name changes for two of our popular water swivels, and it is leading up to more changes in our line. Keep tuned for product updates and don’t forget that there are water swivels for underground drilling as well. If you aren’t sure about which water swivel to choose, you can always contact our technical support team who will be happy to provide some guidance. Our goal is to help you improve your drilling performance.
