As their namesake suggests, slips are designed to help keep drill pipe from slipping down into the hole or to hold the pipe in place. Small but mighty, these specially-designed gripping tools are carefully engineered to handle delicate and dangerous pipes in high-risk environments like drilling rigs.
Slips are wedge-shaped tools that wrap around the drill string. Inside, the slip is lined with small serrated teeth, known as inserts, designed to firmly grip the outside of the pipe, stabilizing and suspending the drill string in the rotary table.
Traditional slips require workers to manually lift and lower slips around the pipe. Once set, the driller slowly lowers the pipe, allowing the teeth to grip the string. The force wedges the slips into the taper of the rotary table’s opening to lock the drill pipe in place, effectively distributing and supporting the weight of the drill pipe. To remove slips, members of the rig crew must grasp and lift the slip handles while the driller lifts the pipe out of the rotary table opening. Once fully removed, the slips are set aside.
Unlike their traditional counterparts, power or automatic slips do not require manual lifting and setting of slips. Instead, power slips can be pneumatically or hydraulically powered and can be operated remotely using a valve or pedal control. And, by eliminating the need for manual handling slips, power slips can also help to reduce crew fatigue and increase safety on the drill floor.
- Drill Pipe Slips
- Made of heat-treated alloy steel for strength and resistance to wear
- Manufactured to API specifications
- Have an API taper of 4”/ft on the diameter
- Drill Collar Slips
- Multi-segment design to fit all drill collars within the slip’s size range
- Slip segments made of heat-treated alloy steel for strength and resistance to wear
- Load rated and has an API tape of 4”/ft on the diameter
- Provided with safety flex handles as a standard option
- UC-3 Casing Slips
- 3” taper designed with a single liner per segment and a liner keeper assembly with bolt and washer
- Continuous one-piece design
- Provided with safety flex handles as a standard option
- CMS Casing Slips
- Multi-segmented design for full wrap-around to help prevent casing damage
- Made of heat-treated alloy steel for strength and resistance to wear
- CMS-XL slips have an API taper of 4” taper on the diameter
- Provided with safety flex handles as a standard option
Whether you use traditional or automatic slips, the proper application helps to prevent bottlenecking and gouging damage, reducing downtime and increasing overall operational efficiency and safety for your drilling projects.
Ramey Martin Energy Tools offers a wide selection of superiorly-designed drill pipe, drill collar and casing slips to handle a variety of applications. Manufactured in the USA, all of our slips are manufactured to API specifications and use tempered and tested alloy steel along with other high-quality materials to ensure maximum handling capacity with minimum weight to ease the handling. Contact us to learn more about how Ramey Martin Energy Tools can help deliver the perfect solution for your energy needs.