A rocking machine is often also called a sucker rod pump drive . It is one of the most important components of a downhole boom rig, which is designed to lift fluid from wells. The rocking machine has the function of ensuring the movement of the pump plunger through numerous columns of pump rods.
Pump installation
It should be understood that the machines for production do not quite correspond to their purpose and device. They do not pump, but simply are the drive of a pump lowered into the well for pumping. The ground part and pumping unit are today quite conservative equipment complexes. Their most important structural elements have not changed decades after their creation.
Rocking machines today
Modern rocking machines consist directly of a transforming mechanism, a drive motor, a gearbox, a V-belt drive, a rack, and also a frame. The approximate service life of this installation, judging by international experience, is more than thirty years. Its replacement or repair is a very expensive and time-consuming process, which is due to the dimensions of the equipment and a significant mass.
A rocking machine is a machine whose design has been improved and improved throughout the history of the oil industry. The specific power and energy intensity of these machines depends on how durable the materials are.
The improvement of rocking machines is due to new developments of standard sizes with similar or similar parameters (instead of existing ones). Some examples can be given. So, they include the following: a belt-type rocking machine, chain-type machines, with a hydraulic conduit, and others. But if in terms of technical parameters these devices can surpass traditional rocking machines, then they could not surpass them in reliability. Therefore, in the oil fields for another ten to fifteen years, precisely this type of drive will be a monopolist.
Rocking Machine Competitors
The most important competitors in the field of using borehole sucker-rod pumping units with a drive today are diaphragm, sucker-rod, electro-screw and hydro-piston units. The last two types of installations are much more expensive, and the first two are the main competitors for the operation of slightly curved and straight wells. Pump sucker rods are distinguished by a lower price of the ground part. They are reliable enough and do not require the construction of a foundation. Their implementation is more organizational than technical in nature, as evidenced by the experience of their operation in Canada.
So it can be safely predicted that in the very near future the demand for rocking machines will remain at the same level, there will not be any major changes in the balancing drives, and their further development will go towards the improvement and creation of rather unconventional designs.