US 4,049,065 A · Drilling apparatus

Abstract

A wheeled or crawler-type vehicle carries a support structure for a drilling apparatus such as used in rock drilling. The support structure includes a tower enclosing a rotary rack for drill rods which may be screwed together by cone threads to form a drill string. The tower is attached to a subtower that can be swivelled relative to the support structure for drilling in any desired angular position. Various devices greatly facilitate the storing and handling of each topmost drill rod. There are transverse drives as well as centering, gripping and retaining means, preferably operated by fluid cylinders, for moving the rotary rack and for transferring the respective drill rod from or to nesting seats in the rotary rack that can be revolved stepwise into accurate juxtaposition with a transfer aperture at the drilling center in line with the drilling head. The latter may be provided with an auxiliary motor to increase the effective torque for heavy duty, e.g. for breaking the screwed connection of the topmost drill rod to the drill string which operation may be assisted by a double spindle system in the drilling head owing to positively locking matched profiles at the drill rod end. Similar matched profiles in the other implements aid in the transfer operations as well.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A drilling apparatus comprising:

a. a mobile base support structure,
b. a drilling tower supported on said support structure,
c. a bearing means upon which said tower is mounted on a horizontal axis, said bearing means permitting adjustment of said drilling tower in a transverse direction relative to said horizontal axis,
d. a drilling head mounted on said drilling tower so that the drilling head can move along the length of said drilling tower,
e. rotary driving means for a drill rod mounted on said drilling head,
f. a storage means included in said drilling tower for receiving a plurality of drill rods in a parallel arrangement of rotational symmetry, said drill rods having cone thread ends for the formation of a drill string and being adapted to be singly handled, said storage means including
1. a revolving rack means which is mounted centrally with respect to said drilling tower, and
2. means for rotating said rack means in arcuate increments so as to permit both the transfer of drill rods out of said rack means and into said rack means, and
g. nesting means associated with said revolving rack, said nesting means including grapplers having spreader arms and transverse drive means, said spreader arms and transverse drive means being adapted to cooperate to transfer drill rods into and out of said rack.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Drilling apparatus

Life of this patent

Drilling apparatus

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims13