The Automatic Manufacturing Technology And Related Application Research In Petroleum Drill Pipe

Under the circumstances that the oil and gas exploration has been widely used, the drilling technology is also developed dramatically– especially for one of the important product– drill pipe. The quality and technology of the drill pipe directly affect to drilling efficiency and safety. Though China has manufactured drill pipes for over ten years, there is still a long way for us to go for machinery equipment and process technology compared to abroad well-known manufacturers. Now China is the largest drill pipe manufacturing base. But most of local production lines are all lack of automation, high involvement for labor and operators, failed for product design and development, product quality is not consistant. This research is based on BHNK project of building a new drill pipe production line. With studying the automatic technology and equipment, we have designed and developed one advanced and top class automatic drill pipe production line. With the project completion, now we have our own special technologies and the production line can meet oil industry quick developing demand.The research is mainly focused on highly efficiency and highly quality. With analyzes on present process and machinery, combined with BHNK over tens manufacturing experiences, we especially pay more attention to 3 areas which have fundamental influences to the manufacturing effiency and product quality:- friction welding process, the heat treatment process afterwards and automation for friction weld. For the key process– friction welding, we have replaced with the industry robot and related technology of the traditional material transferring. Both the rotation table for joint box changes and joint buffer match the automatic manufacturing unit. Also the robot measures the joint length which dimension also links with the welder monitor software and post weld length control system. It has been part of BHNK specific technology. In addition, the whole line mainly focuses on 3 main factors: (a)match between the coil and the drill pipe weld line, (b) the control against the quench oil and (c) the control against the temperature, which all improved the quality of the min-frequency induction hardening. The post weld length control system also solves one problem - center the weld line which used to be centered by operator's experiences. All machines'control system in the production line are linked together and they are under a digital net work. They work together with the developed quality managing software build the human-machine interface via the industrial control PC and touch screen. Now all the information in the production line can be automatically managed including automatic trace/record/save and check. The production line now is daily working. With the analyze to the product performances, we found the quality is much better than the local drill pipe standard. It proved that this subject is correct and technology is reasonable. In addition the new technology has been proved and applied to daily working. The subject's completion increases BHNK's competent power and improve BHNK from traditional manufacturer to the tech-advanced manufacturer.