Metalworking

Growl... Was NOT supposed to send that until I finished typing.

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On the back cover of the newest edition of "New Equipment Digest" there is a very uniquely positioned photo. someone is a marketing genius or made one fortunate mistake.

Nice cut-off device. Would have worked perfectly under water to make a nice clean cut for BP and their "cap" at the oil leak site IMHO. The biggest challenge might have been getting the thing attached to the pipeline securely, but I'm sure they might have been able to figure that out.

Am I the only one who thinks this device is both cool and useful for something like the BP problem.

The marketing genius is showing it making a clean cut in a pipeline-like situation perfectly situated over an oil and gas refinery photo.

I just can't imagine this was accidental.

If the worst of the proposed scenarios are true, BP has popped a balloon full of gas and oil that's going to keep gushing for a very long time. Something like this would be incidental to that.

I suspect that any tool they use down there is going to be pretty mundane at the point where things are touching the pipeline. The fancy parts are going to be the bits that make it work at 5000 feet under water and 5000 feet away from the nearest live human.

There's a good precedent; "King Kong" director Merian Cooper used his experience running high-tech operations in difficult places when he was Operations Officer for Chennault in China. Afterwards he joined MacArthur's staff. Among other adventures he had created a Polish Air Force to fight the Russians in the early 20's, and filmed a foot and horseback migration of the Bakhtiari through the mountains of Persia.

jsw

Just saw a news report.. Same thing happened 30-31 years ago to the mexicans in the gulf. They were only drilling 200 feet down and they attempted the same things that BP attempted.. All attempts failed. Finally the relief wells were what stopped it.. Guess it took them 9 months to finally cap it.

couldn't find the link to the video I saw, but this talks about it..

Google pemex blowout.

Steve

That looks like a really nice saw for that job, but it would have still faced the same problem for the saws they used in the Gulf. The saw would have bound up with all the weight hanging on the pipe. The wire saw has an advantage in that the blade is smaller and probably less likely to get pinched. They really needed another robot pounding wedges into the kerf to keep it open.

Git!

Got sum