Fueled by the request of a major international operator, Downhole Products (DHP) has extended the application range of its Pen-O-Trator line of reamer guide shoes by including an enhanced aluminum nose with pre-stressed zones on the exterior surface. The design modification will assist in the break-up of the shoe's aluminum nose during drill out of the shoe-track following cementing.
The Pen-O-Trator line of reamer guide shoes is specifically designed to be installed on casing, liners, and screens, and is used to enlarge the wellbore post-drilling and prior to running casing. The shoes have been successfully deployed in applications where operators are concerned with potentially difficult wellbore conditions such as swelling shales, ledges, and washed out areas.
The new patent-pending advancement to the reamer shoe includes an engineered pattern of stress zones that allows the aluminum nose to fracture into small pieces when the drill bit encounters the inside of the nose. The smaller pieces are more easily milled, drilled, and evacuated from the wellbore, the company states.
Previous reamer shoes have occasionally caused problems when large pieces of aluminum broke out and spun beneath the drill out bit—reducing penetration to a near standstill. In those cases, the PDC cutters affixed to the drill bit would sometimes become coated with heated aluminum, thus reducing their cutting efficiency.
The Pen-O-Trator product line also includes several additional features:
Surge reduction enhancement
Penetration by reaming past obstructions, with or without rotation
Slick body which eliminates solids build-up
Optional integral low-torque centralizer
Dynamically positioned circulating ports for effective hole cleaning
Self cleaning cutting structure
DHP states that field testing of the enhanced reamer shoe has been conducted over a 12-month period with the major operator and continues to yield success.
Pen-O-Trator reamer shoes have been equipped with this advancement and are available in sizes ranging from 6-5/8 to 20 in.
