CHARLES TOWNSEND's Rig Work Web
&
ALSO the a test site for Houston's
Boy Scout Troop 825 Web Site
CLICK below to enter
Click here for Troop 825 Web Site
Check out My Resume
Most of the pictures in my web link to the full size photo
version of that picture.
At the bottom of this page is the Map of my site to help you navigate my Web.
This is my first web, it is about the new AC (and DC) oil
drilling rigs I have commissioned in the past 5 years, the first 3 years as a
Field Engineer for GE and the past 18 months working for myself.
PLEASE EXCUSE THIS WEB, it is a work in progress. I know it's
ugly, I just figured out how to make this thing called a Web work! It's just something to
show off the work I do and some of the photos I've taken since I started working
for myself.
I have been working on Drilling Rigs since 1978 when I quit
Amtrak, as a Diesel Locomotive Electrician, to go to work for Tommy Green as a
Rig Electrician on a big Baker Jack-Up. I've been doing what you see on
these pages ever since.
When I see Tommy I'm always of two minds: should I hug or
slap him for what he did to me!
A Little AC Motors for Oil Drilling History:
For the last 50 years the Oil Drilling industry and the Locomotive
industry has been told that they will never be able to use economical AC Motors
because trains and drilling rig derricks (= the Drawworks or DW) require a
million foot pounds at half a rpm (like a train starting out or a DW picking 1.5
million pounds of riser out of the slips) and ONLY an expensive, high
maintenance, DC motor can deliver that kind of torque at low rpm's. GE
proved that wrong about 15 years ago when they introduced an AC Locomotive
capable of pulling 100 cars. When I started working for GE those AC motors
and Inverters were being applied to Offshore Oil Drilling Rigs Drawworks (the
drum winch that pulls the hook up the derrick).
Total GE Inverter and GE AC Motor drilling systems were
applied the the Deepwater Drilling Ships and Semi-submersibles being built for
Reading and Bates (now owned by Transocean) in Korea. All other drilling
systems being built at the same time used the GE AC Motors but with other
Inverters with success. GE used AC2000 Inverters line-ups fed DC by GE
CB2000 power sources, about 6 AC2000 per 6 line-ups for redundancy.
This
is me, in the middle, after completing the testing of ZHONG YUAN Rig 18 in
Edmonton Canada. We shipped it to Dubai for the Chinese after that cigar.
That's Mr. Yu to my right and the translator supplied by DRECO, David Jia, to my left.
We believe these new AC rigs will be the future of the drilling industry, and
this is serial number 1 for land rigs. I was sent to help in Canada and
Dubai because of my experience with AC rigs on the
offshore rigs. Though my experience was with GE AC Inverters I was
able to help NOI with these rigs with Vacon AC Inverters. This AC system
is air cooled, now NOI provides water cooled Vacon AC Inverters.
DC
ZHONG YUAN RIG for S&S in Shanghai with Mr.
Yu again
We had spent a month in Canada together doing the NOI AC Rig, now it's just
after 9/11 and I'm in Shanghai with him again and we're putting together a DC
rig with all GE DC2000 Drives. This time the Chinese built the DW too, S&S
just provided the SCR House. Another cigar for Mr. Yu and I, we had just
put on a big show for the Chinese Oil
The BIG thing about this rig is the DC motors are SERIES! S&S is the
ONLY company applying GE's DC2000 SCR's to Series DC Motors, Salem was clueless
on how to tune the drive.
The Chinese LOVED the PC S&S installed that could run GE Toolbox and trend
the drives as they ran. Toolbox could also be used to change the
programming of the drives, we trained the Chinese Electricians on how to
transfer the software (the MP's are programmed differently than the DW) and read
the error codes.
This was a little 5 day job I had over a year ago in the Gulf of Mexico.
I was contracted by Heerema Group Services e.e.s.v., the Dutch owners of the
Hermod, to fix an old GE Siltrol DC Drive for their Anchor Winch. This is
the only "little" job I've put on this site, I did it because it is different
from the Drilling Rigs I work on and I got some GREAT photos waiting for a
helicopter to go back.
The GE IRAQ Rig, that's me, IDC bosses and Saddam's picture
I'm in the office of the head of oil drilling for Southern Iraq, on my right,
and his Chief Engineer Mustafa. Were at the Al Badar IDC complex South of
AL Basrah in Southern Iraq.
We just built another rig for Iraq S&S calls a
GE Micro Plus system, DC but not
GE SCR Drives. S&S used simple drives, quite a contrast to the digital GE Drives. Both use the
GE EGR Generator/Engine controls
The
Deepwater Drilling Rigs: the PATHFINDER,
MILLENNIUM, FRONTIER, NAUTILUS, and HORIZON.
All these rigs have GE AC2000 inverters, built in Korea they were the worlds
first AC Drilling Rigs. I was hired by GE as a Field Engineer to help with
these new drilling rigs and a PLC retrofit to the Hulme, a 15 year old
This
is my "baby" the Nautilus
Part of the deepwater fleet, check it out at
Deepwater Drilling Rig. I helped put it
on that ship in Korea, it was taken to the Gulf of Mexico where it almost
doubled the water depth record when it moored in 7500 feet of water. It also
broke another world record while it was in that depth; drilled the most
expensive well ever at the BAJA wildcat well.
You can contact me at rigman@acrigs.com
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Charlie's STUFF too good to put on my Personal Page
ALL This should go on my Personal page BUT, this is SO GOOD, and I don't have to
hide it! Here is a link to the finest piece of software ever written,
Windows Commander! It is a Windows Explorer sub with the old Norton
Commander interface (but without the blue screens and it works GREAT in Windows
and does FTP and .... well, you get the idea!). Christian Ghisler, WC's
author, just has a nag screen that asks you for $ to get rid of, no expiration
after 30 days etc. like most other shareware. And with Mr. Ghisler
honorable way of asking for $ to support his writing, the whole thing fits of a
floppy,
Don
Lancaster's
The Guru's Lair
http://www.tinaja.com
Here is a link to Don's
Hardware Hacker site, another just too good to go anywhere but my Home Page.
Don would be a hero for me even if he wasn't a caver (Don's
NSS # is 10,963, and MY NSS # is 8,333 the
ONLY thing I'm ahead of Don on) he is on the cutting edge of electronic
engineering (and a LOT of other things) today. I especially admire his
pseudoscience debunking, so
much damage is done to the good science by the trash.
More Personal Stuff:
This is my brother, Mike Townsend
a musician who lives in Port Townsend WA.
More in my Personal Page
FRAVIA
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