How Do You Steer a Drill Below The Earth?

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When the commotion of construction must be minimized, try horizontal directional drilling!
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Like laparoscopic surgery for the earth, horizontal directional drilling (or HDD) doesn’t require digging open a large area like a shaft or a bore pit to get started. Instead, the drill can plunge directly into the earth’s surface. From there, horizontal directional drilling is pretty straightforward, but it’s not necessarily straight. In fact, HDD necessarily uses a curved alignment to enter the earth, travel below a roadway or river, and exit at the surface on the other side.
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КОМЕНТАРІ: 2 100

@PracticalEngineeringChannel Рік тому

📺 Get a year of CuriosityStream AND Nebula for 26% off, just $15!

@dcviper985 Рік тому

I work in the fiber optic network industry, and previously worked in the gas utility industry. We used to joke that you should always carry a length of fiber optic cable with you in case you get stuck on a deserted island. Just bury the cable and when the guy with the backhoe comes out to cut it you can just ride back with him.

@DonDuracell Рік тому

Here in Germany that drilling method did become more known to the public when the company "FlowTex" was sued for the (back then) most expensive large-scale fraud in Germany. The damage was roughly 4.2 billion USD.

@uk_steve Рік тому

I used to work for a UK drilling company as a tracker. We drilled under railway lines with mm tolerances on the tracks. Under woods that had preservation orders and under lots of domestic properties. We drilled under a river aiming for a range rod that the client had stuck in the ground. I will never forget the look on his face when we emerged from the ground and knocked the rod over.

@pyotrberia9741 Рік тому

I could never have imagined how you can steer a long, flexible drill bit. After you explained it, it seems so obvious.

@vipahman Рік тому

That string in the gel demo was awesome and gave such a simple and precise explanation of a problem that I always wondered about. Beautiful!

@__shifty Рік тому

used to work on a directional drilling crew. very cool. we were a small company and one day we hit a big set of fiberoptic lines. poor company went bankrupt after paying for repairs on that fiber.

@MrAzcatfan97 Рік тому

As a utility locator, The talk about the potential impacting of other underground utilities was greatly appreciated. Always call before you dig!

@alexkirkendall7880 Рік тому

I worked installing fiber optic cable when I was in high school, horizontal drilling 4’ underground in residential areas. I was the guy who used a hydrovac to expose existing utilities before drilling so you didn’t hit them with the bit.

@vennic Рік тому

Having recently experienced fiberoptic cable installation in my neighborhood, I can confidently say the lack of trenching was both noted and appreciated

@cmdr1911 Рік тому

I assisted an HDD on Mariner East 2, ME2. We had an inadvertent return so bad we built a pit around it and simply used it as a recirculation pit. There was a lot of effort to mitigate damage professional geologists at each drill and field techs/engineers walking the surface to look for IR's. Amazing tech

@hankschannel Рік тому

Thanks Grady! This answered so many questions that I didn’t even know I had. We had one of these drill right through the water supply to our house. They were like, “there isn’t a pipe here” and I was like, “well, there’s no water going into our house anymore so…”

@oshotz Рік тому

The drill bit knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the drill bit from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is.

@dakotaflowers0 Рік тому

My hone region of ohio is known as "DD paradise" because there are 50 or so directional drilling companies based in a 20 Sq mile area. Also 4 years ago, TC Energy did a reconstruction project on the east buckeye express 36in diameter natural gas pipeline which travels underneath 3 major waterways in my region. My favorite way to kill time was to go out and watch the semi sized drilling rigs boring and pulling up to 3 miles of pre-bent thick wall pipeline on the ROW.

@davemccage7918 Рік тому

“Like laparoscopic surgery for the earth”. Probably the single most brilliant analogy I’ve ever heard in my life. Well done sir, well done.

@Jwalker207 Рік тому

I work at an Engineering firm and have designed multiple directional drills across intercoastal waterways. I now use this video to introduce new engineers to the basics of directional drill. Thanks for putting this together. Also, I see you used to work for Freese, we are partnered with them on a project. I'm a Kimley-Horn guy.

@Gunnut10mm Рік тому

I studied geology and worked with directionally drillers at a utility contractor. Their biggest challenge the drilling foreman told me was hitting hard rock at glancing angles. The problem project that eventually had to be trenched was at the foot of the Wasatch mountains and they hit a high quartz content sedimentary layer less than 30 degrees from parallel to it and it just skipped along the outside edge of that fold and came out where they didn't want it to. They had drilled right through it at more square angles where the bit would be forced to go ahead and chew through that harder to cut rock.

@kaymish6178 Рік тому

that's super interesting its also similar to how the apollo capsules were steered on reentry. The mass was off center so by rotating the capsule it could change pitch or yaw