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The bit scan generated by the Automated Metrology
Laboratory allows engineers to quantify the amount of
diamond loss on every individual cutter on the bit.
tion occurred, or what was the driving factor behind the wear and
tear seen on the drill bit.”
The issue plaguing the industry is not a lack of trained engi-
neers with the skills and mechanical means to evaluate a drill bit.
Instead, it is the fact that there is too much subjectivity and incon-
sistency in the process. “Our measurement system for evaluating
diamond loss is accurate down to three-thousandths of an inch,”
Mr Lyles said. “We know that it is extremely accurate and consis-
tent across every bit that we run, and evaluating trends with that
system provides insight into our bit design and how we overcome
challenges in today’s drilling environments.”
Understanding the complex relationships between back rake
angle, side rake angle, axial force and tangential force versus cut-
ter damage, which vary across every single bit design, allows for
improvements to drilling performance and reductions in the wear
sustained on a given bit.
Cutter testing and development plays a critical role in advanc-
ing drill bit performance. By having these types of data sets avail-
able, Taurex can work directly with cutter manufacturers to drive
enhancements to their designs before they even leave the lab.
Traditionally, these manufacturers have not had a true feedback
system providing insights from the end user. With the detailed
data coming out of AML, however, these same companies now
have access to the information they need to drive better decision
making in their own design processes, leading to better cutters
being implemented in drill bit design across the industry.
“By application, the manufacturers can now go in and do their
own statistical analyses based on the cutter grade run so that they
can start to better understand and correlate cutter performance
to real-life field applications, on a large-scale basis,” Mr Lyles
explained. There is also the issue of how long it takes for individual
human beings to perform drill bit analyses. A process of mechani-
cal measurements would typically require several hours for an
engineer to complete, but AML can now complete the task – with
improved accuracy and precision– in only a few minutes . This
provides Taurex with the ability to drive iterative improvements
to bit design at a much more rapid pace than previously possible,
especially when multiplied across hundreds of bits.
“Data we get from AML can be used the same day on repairs
going on in our shop,” Mr Lyles noted. “We need to have that data
at our fingertips. It’s all about empowering us to make better deci-
sions, and it really does come down to speed, which is why we
automated as much of the process as we could.”
Within 15 minutes — three to four for the scan and 12 to get
everything uploaded to the database — Taurex engineers can
access live data on every bit, tracking information on which cut-
ters are performing best in which positions and which designs
might have a higher damaged-beyond-repair frequency or higher
rate of failure on a specific portion of the drill bit, Mr Lyles said.
“Data democratization is a really critical component of what we
do, and something we’ve spent a lot of time on,” he concluded. “You
can’t automate producing an optimized drill bit, but you can auto-
mate a lot of that analysis and evaluation methodology. You still
need engineers, and you still need contextual domain knowledge
to interpret the data — at least until we can use machine learning
to build models. That might not be as far away as you think.”
Digital dull analytics and in-bit sensors
Halliburton’s Cerebro in-bit sensor package captures
downhole data, including lateral and axial vibration,
torsional resonance, whirl and stick-sli p. Understanding the
drilling environment with data about downhole conditions
and phenomena coming directly from the drill bit makes it
possible to determine why damage occurred to the bit.
16 Chris Propes, Strategic Business Manager for Halliburton Drill
Bits and Services, said that drill bit forensics are key to how the
company does business. “It involves analyzing the dull condition
of the bit and combining that data with information we know
about the run to develop solutions that improve drilling perfor-
mance,” he explained.
One technology Halliburton uses as part of its bit forensics
program, Oculus, is a big data analytics platform that takes 3D
scans of every drill bit the company runs and uploads them into
a database. This provides insight into cutter and bit-body condi-
tion in every market in which it operates. The massive amount
of information coming in, Mr Propes said, must be understood
before it can become actionable.
“What we’ve done is built internal design platforms that allow
us to search down to a specific application — whether an inter-
mediate section in the Permian or a drill-out run offshore — and
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narrow our scope down to extract all of that forensic informa-
tion for that application,” he noted. “That includes dull analytics
from Oculus data, photography and downhole performance data.
Having all that made it possible to build visualizations that help
design engineers make trade-offs to optimize bit design for those
applications.” The sheer number of bits that go into Halliburton’s repair and
maintenance facilities on any given day is actually an advantage
when paired with a system like Oculus. “Every service center is
set up with Oculus,” Mr Propes said. “So, when a bit comes back
to the facility post-run, the first step of the cycle is to scan it with
Oculus to capture that forensic data.”
It is not enough, though, to simply obtain information on the
dull grade. Instead, forensic data from Oculus must be correlated
with design characteristics — the cutters being run, the back
rakes being run, and so forth — so that design decisions can
be tied to the advanced forensics analysis to make meaningful
improvements. Halliburton, Mr Propes noted, approached this
process in a systematic way.
“When you think historically about how you design a bit, you
would get offsets from three or four runs, you would look at pho-
tographs and determine if there was impact damage or abrasion,
and then you would make decisions based on that, but you’d be
isolated with those designs,” he explained. “The key enabler we’re
seeing gain traction is that, although we can still look at those
three offsets in fine detail, we can now enhance decision making
using data from 100 offsets or 1,000 offsets — whatever we filter
to be relevant. It’s about making data-driven decisions versus
intuition-driven decisions, and we’ve moved our whole design
philosophy in that direction.”
Cutter development is the other area in which Oculus provides
quantifiable improvement. With Halliburton running thousands
of cutters, a system that allows the company to compare cutter
performance in a manner that is analytical instead of anecdotal
has driven a step-change in how it interfaces with cutter manu-
facturers. “In collaboration with the cutter manufacturers, we have a
robust understanding of the levers of PDC diamond — grain size,
pressure, leech and all the other variables that go into making
different types of cutters,” he said. “The additional value we bring
is a high-level understanding of dull condition, so we can provide
data on the cutters relative to the downhole environment and
determine what levers we need to pull to solve specific challeng-
es. The advent of data in those discussions has been beneficial by
taking subjectivity out of the equation.”
Another technology critical to Halliburton’s drill bit forensics
program is the Cerebro in-bit sensor package. The sensors capture
downhole data, including lateral and axial vibration, torsional
resonance, whirl and stick-slip, while an upgraded version also
captures data on weight, torque and bending measurements.
Understanding the drilling environment with data about down-
hole conditions and phenomena coming directly from the drill bit
makes it possible to determine why the damage noted by Oculus
occurred in the first place.
“We want to combine data-driven dull analytics and in-bit
sensing with advanced bit technologies and cutters to bring
The Oculus data analytics platform lets Halliburton take 3D
scans of bits and then correlate the data from the scans
with the bits’ design characteristics to make meaningful
improvements. everything together through our design interface,” Mr Propes said.
“We want to take all that information and efficiently integrate it
into a bit design that will consistently outperform whatever the
baseline target is. Historically that’s been an SME-driven, one-
off process. Now, with automated systems, we can make it more
repeatable and consistent to extract performance out of our
designs through data.”
Instead of basing decisions on limited, often anecdotal pieces
of information, companies that use technologies like Oculus
and Cerebro are able to more precisely understand cutter failure
mechanisms and downhole drilling environments. Advanced
dull analytics and depth-based run data come together to provide
a much clearer picture of what happened to the bit, enabling
superior solutions that ultimately result in drilling performance
improvements. Autonomous bit dull forensic digitization
system While some bit forensics solutions focus on technology in a lab,
Trax Electronics has a system that can be used either in a shop,
lab or at the rig site. Called grA+de, the autonomous dull bit foren-
The images collected by Trax’s bit scanner are used to
produce high-resolution 3D models of the bit, including all
wear measurements and characteristics.
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