So he’s starting to get into a routine.
howdy, things were looking good, we are still getting 3 for 1 cores at about 18 runs a day in brittle ice (brittle ice is under tremendous pressure and very cold and can pop or fracture without any force being applied to it once it is at the surface) well, good drilling until…. we are now getting a banging from the top sheave only during high load fast motion times, the noise is transitory and about 10/15 seconds long. the cable runs from the top of the drill string down in the bottom of the hole up to the top sheave, 180 degrees around the top sheave and down to the transfer sheave then horizontally to the level wind sheave then to the reel. the high forces are generated when we first begin to bring the drill string up at roughly 1.2 meter/second as we are in a hole 780 meters or more deep, with about 680 meters of drilling fluid on top of the drill, along with all the cable and the weight of the drill string, we generate about 12,500 newtons of force on the top sheave load cell… (dont ask how much force that is in USA lbs. as this computer does not have a convert program, damned SI units!) but its a lot, and the force is causing the bearing to begin to fail, hence the banging we hear for a short time at the high load time of the run. Jay is planning on replacing the bearing this thursday (new years day off) then we will drill until the 10th when we will get a much needed day off again… so things are still ok healthy and making Ice core …. hope everybody is healthy and drive carefully….