Mud motor bearings for drilling rigs from Monton are designed to offer improved service life and reduced maintenance costs.

Mud motor bearings for drilling rigs from Monton are designed to offer improved service life and reduced maintenance costs. According to the company, this new range can provide a 50% longer run life than many conventional bearings, and trials have revealed a 30% improvement in mean time between failures. In practice, this would mean greatly extended change-out intervals, lessening the need for costly downtime.

Monton attributes the performance improvements to a new computer model developed in-house, based on the company’s wide-ranging knowledge of bearings behavior and advanced engineering materials for a variety of industrial applications. For the first time, the company claims, this model can accurately define the behavior of mud motor bearing stacks, also revealing stress levels within each bearing. This allows engineers to perform virtual tests on new designs very quickly that keep bearing stress levels to a minimum, while at the same time optimizing load-carrying capacity.

The new mud motor bearings incorporate special steels for all load-carrying components, and are configured to provide improved wear resistance and robustness, and higher load-carrying capacity. The new design is also said to practically eliminate the factors leading to cracked rings and sheared balls, the most common causes of failures in these types of bearings.

Monton is supplying the new range in customized versions to suit individual needs, but a typical configuration comprises eight to 12 rows of bearings. At the start of operation, the first four to five rows will bear most of the load, but this is gradually shifted further back as each row starts to wear, until all the rows are worn equally. At this point, the load will switch back to the rows at the front, with the process repeating itself until the bearing reaches the end of its useful life.

For more information contact with Monton.