SWACO Fluid Processing System (FPS)

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August 28, 2020
Forty years ago, back when draftsmen put pencil to paper rather than stylus to pad, before CAD existed, I was an engineer for working for a company that produced oilfield drilling equipment. I was astonished at my good fortune when I was assigned the task of building a model of our new drilling fluid processing system in order to prove out the blueprints. Once the proof model was done, I was to build models of all the equipment that was used on the FPS platform, and assemble everything into a display model for the 1980 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. I spent over 600 hours on the model. The finished model measures 42" x 12" x 12".
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August 28, 2020
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August 28, 2020
The drilling mud progressed from left to right in this photo, moving from coarse to fine vibrating screens to separate large cuttings, then through a series of hydrocyclones to separate finer cuttings, on to a series of centrifuges to remove the finest particles, and finally through a degasser to remove any entrained gasses from the mud. Sorry for the funky coloring-- these are scans of 40-year-old photos.
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August 28, 2020
Feed side of the vibrating screens, and below, the pumps and piping that move the mud through the system.
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August 28, 2020
Large hydrocyclones. Mud enters through the white pipe, cleaned mud exits through the ell on the left, cuttings drop from the nozzle on the right onto the vibrating screen below, where any mud clinging to the cuttings is removed and returned to the system.
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Small hydrocyclones.
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August 28, 2020
Small hydrocyclones.
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August 28, 2020
Centriguges.
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Degasser.

Comments

4 28 August 2020, 11:49

gorby
WOW!
That's a remarkable bit of scratch-building - amazing work!

28 August 2020, 14:34

Spanjaard
and amazing job indeed... that is real models as it can get .
and getting paid for it on top? what a lucky guy 🙂

28 August 2020, 15:24

Julian Herrero aka Yuri
Brilliant work , congratulations

28 August 2020, 18:56

Augie
Nice mud pits 🙂 You doing rest of the rig?

28 August 2020, 19:05

Matthew A
Looks like something Gerry Anderson would blow up

28 August 2020, 19:15

Mike Szwarc
Thanks for the comments, guys, and thanks for looking! Augie, this is a model I built 40 years ago when I worked for the now defunct Dresser Industries. SWACO, the company I worked in, only made mud processing equipment, pressure control equipment, and some instrumentation, and this model includes all of the mud processing equipment on one mud tank and pump system. It sure would have been fun to build the drilling rig too. 🙂 Matthew, LOL, after the model was shown at OTC in 1980, someone in marketing got the bright idea to send it to some show overseas. It came back to me several weeks later looking like something Gerry Anderson DID blow up-- they wanted me to repair it. Once I surveyed the damage, I could see it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked. The railings were completely destroyed, and some of the equipment had come loose and sustained minor damage, but there was no major damage, and I got paid to work on the model for a couple more weeks. 😄

28 August 2020, 21:19

JD
Wow, you are a bonafide thoroughbred model master with a pedigree! Now I start to understand how come you're so dammed good at what you do. 🤔

2 September 2020, 04:40

Mike Szwarc
JD, even with my "professional" 🙂 background, for some reason, plastic model kits have always intimidated me. I hadn't built a non-figure plastic kit in 50 years when I built the Hanomag that came in the Band of Brothers kit. That's what inspired me to try some more ambitious kits. and when I realized I could build things the way I wanted by kitbashing, I was sold on plastics.

2 September 2020, 12:43

Album info

1/16 scale (3/4" = 1') industrial model I built 40 years ago directly from equipment blueprints. Materials: Plastruct ABS, acrylic, and styrene components, dacron screen, miniature brass nuts, bolts, springs, and chain.

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