Drill, Baby, Drill!
It’s about the people
Whether its drill rig designers, prospectors or the roughnecks operating the rigs, you have to face the reality that the massive mining industry that is Australia’s wealth, owes a lot to drilling. Whether it’s about operating in existing areas or exploration drilling to find the future wealth that our island continent needs to.
Either way, the driller plays an essential part in the general prosperity of the entire country. Without the people, the rig designers, the prospectors and the rig operators and maintenance teams, Australia’s wealth would be substantially reduced.
One thing is for sure, the conditions of many of the operating sites are primitive to say the least. The temperatures often are ridiculously hot or cold and the weather sometimes inclement. We certainly owe a lot to the operators as well as home-grown rig designers and manufactures who have shown what innovative engineering is all about.
Why Aussie Pumps
Australian Pump Industries got involved in the drilling industry when we started getting phone calls from the field. Engine drive mud pumps, many of them from third world countries, simply weren’t doing the job.
They saw that we were building heavy duty trash pumps, everything from 2 inch by 2 inch to all the way through to big 6 inch pumps that deliver up to 6000 liters a minute. That 6 inch is a bit big for normal mud pumping but it is virtually bullet proof!
We started supplying 2 inch cast iron pumps, many with diesel engines, mainly Yanmar L series, and occasionally even with Honda petrol drive. We were responding to specific enquires from the field without knowing very much about the application.
We soon learned
The wonderful thing about the drilling teams is that they tell you what they think and don’t pull any punches. We learned that some of the commercial cast iron semi trash pumps we were putting into the market were wearing out impellers prematurely and being run dry occasionally with the resulting seal failures.
We started asking for failed components to come back to our factory in Sydney so that our engineers could analyze what was going wrong. It was a fairly simple exercise. The impellers were cavitated and eroded.
Mechanical seals were mainly overloaded or showed signs of dry running. It’s easy to tell a dry run seal. If the elastomers are melted, you can be pretty sure that the pump has been run dry! We also found that conventional ceramic seals simply weren’t up for the job.
Aussie Rescue
Yes, we set out to rescue the situation by coming up with enhanced products.
The first step was to put tungsten carbide mechanical seals in the pumps and to start building them with 316 stainless steel impellers.
This changed the wear rate dramatically. The body is mainly cast iron but some of the bigger pumps being bought by leading drill manufacturers were in nickel aluminum bronze. We learnt a lot fast about the composition of the liquids being pumped, whether it was the mud itself or ground water.
Bigger pumps, more power
By now, we’d swapped over from petrol or diesel engine drive pumps and realised that drill rigs all have hydraulic systems. Therefore, it made sense to run the mud pumps off the rig itself.
That gave us a better idea of how to produce pumps that would go the distance. The result was working with particularly terrific people like the team at Australian Exploration. We started experimenting with hydraulic drive high pressure and high flow 3 inch pumps. Aussie’s G3TMK A series not only had the ability to pump up to 1100 meters a minute but also had the capability of pumping to high heads, where pressure was required. The maximum head of a G3TMK-A/ST (semi trash pump) fitted up with a hydraulic drive motor kit is 54 meters. That’s 75 PSI!
The best news was these pumps were unusual but were already proving themselves in water cart applications where dust suppression was the major task.
Dust suppression special, semi trash configuration, into mud pump!
Bigger flow pumps were also needed for some jobs. Our model B3XR-A/ST, is a 3 inch semi trash pump in cast iron. It features a front opening clean out-port, like all the ST series, and has 1500 litres a minute flow with less pressure than the G series. It has a very respectable maximum head of 31 meters.
These were already being used all over the country by tanker operators that knew hydraulics was the way to go instead of the engine drive tanker pumps.
Both those series of 3 inch pumps are now available with stainless steel impellers, tungsten carbide mechanical seals, fitted with a clean-out port below the suction port. It only takes a matter of minutes to clean out any obstructions that might get in the impeller chamber… too easy.
John Hales has his say
John Hales is Aussie Pumps Chief Engineer. John started getting involved with the application largely through reports of failures. “It’s failures that drive improvements.” said Hales.
The result was much better wear, with the pumps being modified to be able to accommodate just about any configuration.
These pumps can be driven by Yanmar diesel engines, petrol engines (not recommended), bare shaft or hydraulic drives. Hydraulic drives seem to be winning out in terms of popularity because of the simple closed drive. That’s dust free and can deliver much more power to the mud pump.
Eventually a super heavy duty cast iron self-priming pump body can wear over a period of time.
We were astonished when we saw the first cast iron 3 inch body returned to us with a hole in the casting. No, it wasn’t an error from the foundry or a blowhole in the middle of the pump body. It was just purely wear from the abrasive material that the pump had been handling.
That experience got us thinking about how to combat the wear factor on the body rather than just the impeller.
The Aussie GMP self-priming bodies are built with big shoulders to hold the priming liquid and is the reason why the pumps self-prime so fast and effectively. The bodies are all made in a first-class foundry in northern Italy.
We decided to try with 316 stainless steel bodies, 316 impellers, tungsten carbide mechanical seals and see what happened. The result was quite dramatic.
316 stainless steel is ridiculously hard but is abrasion and corrosion resistant. The tungsten carbide seal provides long seal life.
The result, longer life and more reliability.
After market support
In the early days of supplying mud pumps — the phase that we call premature failures (worn out impellers after 8 or 9 months) — we realised that having spare parts kits, or REJ kits, on site was a good idea.
Most smart drillers using our pumps have at least one low-cost rejuvenation kit handy that includes the mechanical seal, all of the elastomers and gaskets.
In other words, you can do a rebuild in the field if the pump is inadvertently run dry. The REJ kit can come to the rescue.
Today not only do you get the mechanical seal and counter-face but also the check valve, filling cap and trash port gaskets for all of our heavy duty Aussie GMP drill pumps.
The clean up process
It’s not only the mud pump that can be hydraulic drive but also the high pressure washdown kit. They are set up with unloader, safety valve and gauge. This becomes a very compact cleaning kit with one very popular model with drillers, model THY2715HYD.
The 2715 indicates a 150 bar pressure and a flow of 37 liters per minute. That’s a great combination to really get some mud, dirt or dust off the rig and other equipment as well.
These kits are all supplied with 10 meters of high-pressure hose, with an optional stainless steel reel with 30 metres of hose, heavy duty gun and Turbo Lance for tough chores. Again, hydraulic drive makes for a very compact and closed drive circuit that is dust free.
For bigger pumps, Aussie’s TTL2028 Hydraulic drive consists of a 20 liter per minute flow pump but 4000PSI pressure. A clean rig is no longer a luxury. Of course you need a water supply!
Water well drillers
We are finding the same reaction now from water well drillers. With the problem of finding water for farmers, or mining camps, water well drilling is an essential part of regional Australia.
The rigs are different but they still need pumps and they’re taking to the hydraulic drive idea as well. So, there is no need to service or refuel small portable engines like Honda petrol or single cylinder air cool diesel engine drives.
We are all seeing changing climate conditions, hotter summers, longer and more frequent droughts, not to mention more frequent floods as well. We can’t deny that this is a fact of life and that’s where the water well drillers come in.
It’s not only farmers, it’s for anybody on a cattle station or mining camp that needs to find water. Trucking water to remote locations is expensive but, Aussie’s got that covered too.
Our range of tanker pumps goes all the way from 2 inch to big 4 inch pumps that deliver 2000 liters of water per minute. These big heavy duty cast iron pumps are now available in 316 stainless steel, a boon for anyone wanting to pump water.
The Aussie ethic
Australian Pump is very much aware that it’s the people out in the field that drive the country’s wealth. Often neglected by politicians, farmers and miners just keep going on about their business and carrying the economy.
The Aussie Pump team of less than 50 people, are dedicated to those folk. We know what it’s like to be hot, dirty and to even hurt yourself on a big piece of plant. It’s part of what happens and to that end, we are out to make both our high pressure cleaning and drilling equipment safer.
For pressure cleaners, we have a free Safety Training Program that’s a certificate course.
We get people from Africa, South America and even Southeast Asia who have done the training course and showed their appreciation by telling us more about what they actually do.
It’s a learning curve and we support ship builders even in Vietnam where we found pressure cleaner safety is virtually unknown.
Miners of Australia… we’re on your side!
Further information is available from aussiepumps.com.au
