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Camcopter S-100 helicopter drone makes world-first oil rig delivery:
Aviation history was made off the coast of Norway recently as a Camcopter S-100 drone rotorcraft delivered a 3D-printed part to an oil rig after a 100-km (55-nm, 62-mi) flight over the North Sea, potentially opening up a path towards safer, cheaper and lower-emissions servicing of these massive off-shore operations.
The array of North and Norwegian Sea oil platforms built mainly by Britain and Norway are among the most impressive engineering projects of the late 20th century. A vital part of the world's energy economy, they are also very hazardous to operate, having to endure some of the worst weather and sea conditions on Earth.
To service these platforms, the oil companies operate the world's largest fleet of heavy Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) helicopters. These carry two million passengers a year and some of these machines were built especially for North Sea work. Each of these trips is very expensive and dangerous, which is why the least popular part of employee training is suiting up in survival suits and being subject to a simulated helicopter crash in a tank of ice-cold water.
It's a small wonder, then, that the oil companies are taking a hard look at unmanned rotorcraft to take over some of the cargo flights and other missions. According to Nordic Unmanned, the use of drones is not only safer but reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 55 times and lowers operating costs.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 08 2020, @07:29PM (14 children)
Hey stupid, it's cheaper to just have a 3d printer on the oil rig. You don't have to wait for good weather, worry about ice accumulation, etc.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 08 2020, @07:44PM (12 children)
Sounds good in theory. Of course, you still have to ferry supplies for the printer out to the platform, right? And, I can't help wondering how well a printer is going to work in an oil platform environment. Maybe we should mount a 3D printer on a nice 3 dimensional gimbal system ashore first, and subject the printer to more-or-less random gravitational forces during printing operations. I also suspect that printers will work most reliably in nice clean rooms, as opposed to industrial settings.
I'll hazard a guess that the printers are a few generations away from being ready to deploy aboard off shore platforms.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 08 2020, @08:25PM (9 children)
These oil rigs are massive. They're not the SS Minnow from Gilligans Island. They HAVE to be stable platforms. And you certainly don't need microchip fan level clean rooms - people are doing this in their garage or base.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 08 2020, @08:46PM (3 children)
"Stable" is a relative term. May I ask about the roughest sea conditions you have ever experienced? What does "stable" mean, in the North Sea, when the waves are over 40 feet for weeks at a time?
Standing aboard a destroyer, which is itself being lifted and dropped about 60 feet with each wave, an oil platform does look stable. I mean, it's only being lifted and dropped about 10 feet with each wave. How will that affect your printer?
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:26AM
Well, there was that one time when some of my bath water sloshed out onto the floor.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:40AM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:21AM
I bow to your years of experience on the sea. My paltry five years of sea duty, including a cruise in the very waters we are discussing, amounts to nothing. Thanks to your observations, I now know that sea conditions and local weather are highly dependent on each other. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:18AM (4 children)
> Do you ferry a bolt to an oil rig every time you need one?
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Actually, they do. It is called "hot-shotting", and in my dark past, I spent a few months working as a hot-shotter, although my work was on land.
When something breaks, and the rig is down, and you don't happen to have a replacement part handy, it's cheaper to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to hot-shot the replacement part to the rig than it is to pay everybody's wages to sit idly by waiting for a scheduled (or regular) shipment.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:35AM (3 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:38AM
It's all about "the best laid plans".
Generally it wasn't simple nuts and bolts, but rather more expensive items such as valves, drill heads, pipe, pumps and such. Still you never know what's going to break or when, and when you're halfway down a 12K foot hole, you're not motivated to stop and wait for UPS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:47AM (1 child)
Also, I'm not saying you don't have a reasonable stock of replacement parts for normal work. How many brake-pads, carburetors, generators and axles do you keep in the boot of your car?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:10PM
Is it a British car?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:01PM (1 child)
I have a consumer grade mk3s printing on our very loose kitchen table and when the print head starts moving quickly the whole table will start to shake. Hasn't affected the print quality so far. I've also seen some demonstrations of people printing objects sideways or upside down with consumer level printers. That's just talking about the fused-deposition modeling, SLA or SLS type printers might really need stability. Anyway, as long as the print-head and other moving parts are secured to a stable chassis the print quality shouldn't be affected by slow changes in orientation of the oil platform. Heck I've even bumped into the table a few times and the sudden jerk didn't cause any issues. The only trouble I can see would come from having tall prints that may break loose from the print bed. Material selection would solve that issue though. For instance PETG binds so strongly to glass print surfaces that its been known to take chunks out of the glass when being removed.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @07:12PM
Ahhhhh - points for addressing my stated concerns. I don't have one, so I don't know how sensitive a printer is. So, let us presume that a good industrial quality printer is probably immune to a platform's natural tossing in a storm. I suppose the bean counters are looking at the cost of the printer, as well as keeping a qualified person aboard to run the printer.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @07:47PM
I doubt it's your home 3d printer. This is probably industrial laser-solder printer, which is rare and expensive to maintain, and likely not used often enough to have one on-hand at every ring. On top of that, the engineers likely need to be on hand to monitor and adjust the printing process. So one 3d printer lab can serve several platforms, and you can keep the engineers on-shore.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @08:12PM (2 children)
It's quite ironic that they're crowing about reducing the CO2 emissions of aircraft required to service a friggin' oil rig that will end up dumping god-only-knows how much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Have their marketing people no shame? (Of course not, they're marketing people.)
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @09:24PM
They probably have a check list:
PRESS RELEASE CHECKLIST:
Make sure at least one and at most 2 items in this list are present in your PR.
1. subject is the ecological choice
2. subject advances the right of minorities (pick only one minority we don't want to look like we have an agenda)
3. subject facilitates the larval life of the average consumer (avoid spelling this out explicitly)
4. subject hinders the conservative plans (bonus, ironically imply Trump will hate this)
And remember that subject is the most reasonable choice from a purely economic POV.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:16PM
What's ironic about that? The oil rig will be serviced anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @08:20PM (1 child)
I know the technology has been rapidly improving, but they delivered a whole freakin' oil rig?????
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @09:27PM
Yeah still waiting for the vinegar, salt pepper and toothpicks.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday September 08 2020, @09:33PM (1 child)
I remember when S-100 was most commonly used for something completely different [wikipedia.org]. 😀
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:12PM
I think they are hinting that the flight computer is based on the S-100 bus. I would like to know if it's a 6500, Z80, 8088, or some other CPU.