Using Kennametal tools, Premium Frac Pumps (PFP) has reduced tooling costs by half and tripled productivity. This manufacturer of heavy-duty equipment for the demanding oil- and natural gas-drilling industry machines 12,000 lb, 60 x 30 x 30 in. blocks of forged steel into 5,800 lb fluid cylinders with many complex holes for attaching other components, and ultimately ships completed pump assemblies to the field.
Company president Kevin Riley started the operation with three CNC milling machines and a $50 million purchase order for the pumps, which are used by energy companies to inject a high-pressure mixture of sand and water into the earth to break up well blockages. Riley, who expects his company to reach between $30-40 million in sales next year, credits Kennametal in large part for PFP’s success. (Pictured right, a freshly machined frac fluid cylinder.)
“Within eight months of opening, we started shipping product,” says Riley -- but the product was taking a long time to produce, according to Riley and PFP lead programmer Dominic Freeze, due in part to the problem of scale on the forgings.
“Productivity was fairly low,” Freeze says. “There wasn’t a whole lot getting done because it was taking us about 180 hours to machine one part down.”
Cutting Scale Down to Size
Earlier this year, Kennametal applications engineer Mark Davis paid a call on PFP and suggested using a 6 in. Kennametal BMD600R8607S150L250 cutter to get through the scale on the outside of the forgings.
“Scale on a forging is a nasty nightmare,” Freeze says. “In the forging process, it’s tough to get a forging to cool evenly, so you end up with this scale on the outside. A lot of our forgings come in with a half inch of scale. There’ll be hard spots and soft spots and the hard spots are extremely tough to get through.”
Davis brought in Kennametal milling specialist Dave Stewart to help optimize the scale busting and other milling processes on the fluid end. The Kennametal Milling Cutter and the application skills of the Kennametal team took hours off this process. Machining the scale off one side of the forging required three indexes on a competing face mill. The Kennametal team removed the scale and sized the block on the same corner, saving significant indexing time. They further optimized the sizing and shaping process with another new Kennametal milling product, a 6 in. Dodeka Cutter, KSHR600HN5345M8
PFP had gone through a lot of competitive tools and inserts on its huge Toshiba and Koraki horizontal milling machines before choosing the Kennametal solution. The situation was costing the company about $20,000 per month in inserts.
Both the BMD600R8607S150L250 Cutter and the Dodeka Cutter use grade KC935M inserts, a multilayer CVD coated grade designed for dry machining at high SFMs. The BMD series cutters offer a depth of cut capability to 0.5 in. using a 1 in. diameter by 0.375 in. thick positive insert for heavy milling with a minimum of four indexes per insert. The Dodeka Cutter offers 12 cutting edges per insert with 0.178 in. depth of cut capability.
Saving Money, Increasing Productivity
“It was so much of an improvement over what we were doing we had no choice but to switch,” Freeze says. “They’re extremely free cutting. I’m able to increase depths of cut, cover more surface footage, and have larger cubic inches per minute of material removal. We’re taking 80-100 cubic in. cuts, which is insane.”
Now, because of the Kennametal tools, the onetime 180 hour job is done in 54 hours, at about one-fourth of the cost.
With speed improved, so has productivity. Before using the Kennametal tools, PFP was able to finish just one or two fluid cylinders per week. Today, it completes one every day.
If any more proof is needed, check PFP’s 30 yd chip hopper. “Before, we’d empty the 30 yd chip hopper once every couple of weeks,” Freeze says. “Now we have to do it every single day, sometimes more than once a day.”
PFP has had such a positive experience with the face mills that the company now is in the process of converting to 100% Kennametal tools.
“Overall, the productivity will be three times what it was and the cost about half with the Kennametal tools,” Freeze predicts.
From its original three, PFP currently has 12 CNC mills and is in the midst of an expansion into a 40,000 sq ft building across the street. The original 27,000 sq ft facility will be dedicated to assembly operations; the new building will house machining.
“Kennametal has been working closely with us,” Riley says. “They’ve come up with some incredible speeds and feeds. They’re an awesome company to work with. They’ve furnished us with a lot of test products and I think Dominic has proven all of their theories. We appreciate all they’ve done for us.”