power tong test stand free sample

Texas International Oilfield Tools (TIOT) offers a free standing test stand for testing of hydraulic casing and tubing power tongs. The test stand is designed to resist torque applied by a power tong through a test mandrel.

The test stand is an air operated device that utilizes a hydraulic active dual spring disc brake chamber in order to apply friction force (“brake” action) to the rotating (or stationary) test mandrel mechanism. The power tong is tested by applying torque to the test stand’s mandrel. The test stand’s brake is activated by pushing and twisting clockwise the red control box button on the control box. A brake foot pedal is supplied as backup for the mini power unit. Using the control box mounted on the test stand, the black knob regulates pressure.

Before your tongs see any action, it’s essential to perform a tong test. Our tong testing stand allows you to test both hydraulic casing and tubing power tongs. Tong testing works by resisting the torque applied by the power tongs through a test mandrel. The tong test stand can be used for tool testing, certifying torque requirements, as well as training personnel on new, or unfamiliar equipment.

Casing tong handling tools (CTHTs) improve safety and efficiency by reducing the time to complete casing running operations. The CTHT automatically moves the casing tongs to and from well center, which decreases the personnel required to make up casing on the rig floor. Additionally, the CTHT increases the speed of running the casing tong to and from well center. Operations are faster and more consistent, from shift to shift, crew to crew.

The CTHT is an upgrade to an existing offshore drilling rig. This tool lifts and handles casing tongs, ranging in size from 7 5/8 in to 30 in, to and from the well center during casing running operations. And it can be used on any Cameron SmartRacker vertical pipe handling system or any other brand of column racker.

Wedge-shaped pieces of metal with teeth or other gripping elements that are used to prevent pipe from slipping down into the hole or to hold pipe in place. Rotary slips fit around the drill pipe and wedge against the master bushing to support the pipe. Power slips are pneumatically or hydraulically actuated devices that allow the crew to dispense with the manual handling of slips when making a connection. Packers and other down hole equipment are secured in position by slips that engage the pipe by action directed at the surface.†

The large wrenches used for turning when making up or breaking out drill pipe, casing, tubing, or other pipe; variously called casing tongs, rotary tongs, and so forth according to the specific use. Power tongs are pneumatically or hydraulically operated tools that spin the pipe up and, in some instances, apply the final makeup torque.†

While it is not mandatory to have this certification, each service rig crew is required to have two members who are certified in Standard First Aid with CPR level C. Therefore, obtaining a certification beforehand is a great way to improve your chances of being hired.

Alternatively, after you have completed a few tests, you can just compare the maximum lactate value you hit to determine whether your VLaMax is increasing/decreasing.

NotesThis test must be done after the full/abbreviated ramp test not before, otherwise you’ll be waiting a long time for your lactate values to come right back down to baseline before you can begin the ramp test.

Maximum attainable lactate values typically range between 15-20mmol/L with some specially trained athletes reaching 25mmol/L. However, it’s also normal to see somewhat lower lactate values in this test, given the effort is very short, e.g. ~5-6mmol/L.

Don’t complete this anaerobic test if you have any health concerns that might be exacerbated by a 20-sec maximal effort, or if you have been advised by a medical professional to avoid high-intensity exercise.

An increase in this lactate value can indicate an increase in your anaerobic power or VLaMax. This would usually be associated with a decrease in your tendency to use fats for fuel.

If you choose to convert this lactate value directly into a VLaMax value (i.e. in terms of mmol/L/sec), you can get an idea of how strong your anaerobic is. VLaMax typically ranges from around 0.2mmol/L/sec and 1.0mmol/L/sec (Heck et al., 2003). For most endurance sports, it’s been suggested that you’d want this to ideally sit somewhere between 0.3mmol/L/sec and 0.5mmol/L/sec (the lower end for more steady-state disciplines, and the higher end for more punchy disciplines). However, in our experience, it’s hard to determine VLaMax accurately enough to reliably assess where you sit within these ranges. Plus, the ‘optimum’ VLaMax will also depend on your aerobic capacity (with a higher aerobic capacity allowing higher VLaMax values to be tolerated while still allowing for good endurance and threshold power). Therefore, we do not compare VLaMax values to these standard cut-points, but prefer to use the testing to broadly understand whether VLaMax is either low, medium or high and whether that seems appropriate for the athlete’s goals and other fitness attributes.

The main value to testing is when you combine all the results of the various tests, allowing you to pinpoint the specific physiological changes that have caused the observed changes in lactate values. We outline some key examples below:

It’s important to acknowledge the limitations of lactate testing. Lactate monitors are prone to error, particularly if you’re new to lactate testing and/or if you use a lactate monitor that requires large samples of blood or is very sensitive to contamination (e.g. from sweat). This can make interpretation of results hard, because it can be difficult to determine if any measures are erroneous. In our experience, at least three or four rounds of testing are needed in order to confidently understand your lactate profile, and eliminate incorrect readings. Thus, lactate testing is only really valuable if you’re committed to performing this on a fairly regular basis.

Finally, lactate samples are by no means a perfect measure of what’s going on ‘under the hood’. Lactate is produced at the muscle fibre, and this can then be shuttled to other neighbouring muscle fibres for use as fuel, or transported into the blood stream and then to other parts of the body, where it can be used as fuel or converted back to glycogen. A lactate measure from blood at the fingertip or ear lobe is therefore quite distant from what’s going on metabolically at the working muscle. The measure we see will be influenced by things like total blood volume/body size, how effectively lactate is transported around the body, and how effectively lactate can be metabolised or otherwise cleared, and these factors will differ markedly from person to person. We think that there are better options to lactate testing, such as use of near-infrared spectroscopy to measure muscle oxygen saturation in the muscle capillaries (e.g. using a MOXY device). However, lactate testing remains a relatively cost-effective option and can certainly provide useful insight when better (but more costly/less accessible) options are not available.