Reverse Engineering of PDC Drill Bit

Reverse engineering (RE) is a very important technology especially in geometrically design and manufacture application area where this technique has been widely recognized as an important step in products and systems. This study is focus on the PDC drill bit which is one of the fixed types drilling tool use in oil and gas industry for the drilling of a well. The actual drawing or blueprint of the drill bit is hardly to be retrieved in order for a study of the engineering problem for a learning institution. Drill bit has a short life span of about six to eight month due to wear and tear and to replace a new drill bit will take a high cost in the downtime cost of the well. In this project, a wear and tear PDC drill bit will be choose to be reverse engineered, analyse, rebuild of the like new bit design, design improvement and fabrication of the prototype. This project is mainly focused on the non-contact RE method to scan one type of PDC drill bit which has a severe wear and tear condition. The PDC drill bit will first be scan using a 3D scanner in order to produce the 3D CAD design of the original bit. Then, the 3D CAD design will be redesign so that it would be look like the original part of the PDC drill bit before it happens to wear and tear. Lastly, a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) will be done on the rebuild drill bit design with a few selection of material used and a prototype of the rebuild design is fabricate. It is expected that this project meet its objectives and will be completed in time with a documentation of the analysis will be produce and the prototype of the drill bit that has been modified will be manufactured.