Key takeaways
- A hydraulic grapple moves a rod in under 40 seconds
- Set the rod rack at rig height to avoid the double lift
- Inspect threads every rod change, not every shift
Most injuries on an HDD site do not happen at the rig. They happen between the rod rack and the rig, when two people carry or roll a 300 kg rod. Take the hands out of that movement and you take away most of the risk.
Use a grapple, not a strap
A hydraulic rod grapple on the excavator picks up a rod, turns it and places it in the vice in under 40 seconds. No straps, no fingers near the thread. The RodGrip Pro handles rods from 2 7/8 to 6 5/8 inch without changing jaws.
Put the rack at rig height
A rack on the ground means every rod is lifted twice. Set the rack at the height of the rig’s rod loader and the grapple moves in one motion. It sounds obvious. Half the sites we visit do not do it.
Threads
- Clean and dope every thread at every rod change
- Look at the shoulder: a shiny ring means the joint is over-torqued
- Replace a rod with a damaged thread the same day, not the next job
Written by Service team HDD Drilling Equipment
The engineers who build, test and service the mixing units in Nijverdal.
