Oil rig drilling platforms are extremely high cost capital investments. So it is understandable that the designers and end users of such massive structures have reliability and availability at the very top of their list of ‘must haves’ when they consider much of the critical equipment.

And for Jack-up platforms, that are designed to float to a location and then have the drilling platform ’jacked up’ off the surface of the sea, one piece of critical equipment is surely the jacking gearbox. Jacking gearboxes provide the power to lower the platform legs onto the sea floor and then lift the enormous weight of the drilling platform high enough above the water so there is no interference to drilling operations from wave motion, even in stormy conditions.

Hyosung Corporation of Korea proudly claim that their jacking gearboxes give “reliability and power”. And SKF are proud to contribute to that assertion by providing 23 bearings in each of their latest designs of gearbox, including the SKF CARB toroidal roller bearing which delivers the highest carrying power in the smallest package of any bearing type.

Any system is only as strong as the key components in the system. If any single components should fail, the entire system fails. It was these thoughts in mind that Mr. Won-Cheol Hong, Senior Designer at Hyosung Industrial Machinery began his project to design a smaller, lighter, more powerful jack-up gearbox for oil drilling platforms, than his company had delivered before.

Tags: SKF