Emerging Technologies

Darron-SBO provide high quality drilling tools under their Darron Oil Tool brand and also offer precision manufacturing services to a variety of oilfield sectors, and have established worldwide centres of excellence for Gun Drilling and Laser Cladding in their Rotherham facility.

Gun drilling is a flexible and effective process for producing close tolerance holes with smooth surface finishes, with high length to diameter ratios. Darron already have extensive in-house CNC machining capabilities for 10m long products including 5 axis milling, deep-hole boring and turning, and in 2010 these were extended to include high precision gun drilling machines. Darron's machines can drill holes from 3-50mm diameter and up to 4,500mm deep, with a run off measured in microns, in non-magnetic, 4145 and high-nickel oilfield alloys.

Laser hardfacing applies a thin layer of tungsten carbide to downhole tools, and combines a very abrasion resistant coating, tight dimensional control, and low heat input in a single process. Darron SBO is the only company that can offer a full range of hardfacing systems in-house and on products up to 10m long in their Hardfacing Centre of Excellence. These processes range from manually applied cutting carbide, through HF3000 tiles to HF6000 PTA applied powder, and now laser hardfacing.

These processes are proven and validated in the company's in-house laboratory which was used to develop and control a variety of new laser hardfacing systems and procedures. Darron's CO₂ Laser is attached to a 10m, 6-axis machine and has successfully applied coatings to MWD, LWD, Rotary steerable tools as well as standard sleeves and stabilisers.