What is the difference between PDC and tricone bits?

What is the difference between PDC and tricone bits? 

Have you ever encountered this situation?

When drilling specific formations, operators often have to choose between PDC bits and tricone bits.

Let's find out what is the difference between PDC bits and tricone bits.

PDC bit is the main tool of drilling downhole tools, which has the advantages of long life, low drilling pressure and fast rotational speed, and is the most important tool to speed up drilling. Which with long life, high value and high wear resistance.

Tricone bit are a rotary drilling tool consisting of three "cones" that rotate on lubricated bearings. It is commonly used in water, oil and gas drilling, geothermal, and mineral exploration scenarios.

About their differences:

1. Cutting method:

PDC bits use grinding cutting method, which inserted composite pieces capable of drilling at high rotational speeds.

Tricone bits adopts the method of impacting and crushing the rock formation by rotating and downward pressure of the drill bit.

2.Application:

PDC bits are more effective in softer formations and geological conditions. Such as sandstone, mudstone, etc.

For harder and strongly broken strata, tricone bits are more suitable, its gears can penetrate and break the rock more effectively.

3.Drilling efficiency:

PDC bits usually provide higher drilling speed and longer life, the inlaid multiple composite bits can share the wear and tear of the bit for it.

Tricone bits have a shorter life due to the mutual friction of the gears.

4.Drill bit cost:

PDC bits are more expensive to manufacture, but their longer life and higher efficiency can result in cost savings during the drilling process.

Tricone bits are cheaper to manufacture, but they have a short service life and need to be replaced frequently.

 It is critical to choose the right type of bit for different formation characteristics and specific drilling needs.

The advantages of PDC are high drilling speeds and high drilling efficiency in rock drilling and low mechanical drilling speed loss.

Tricone bits have the advantage of a larger bit size and higher cutting capacity, making them an excellent multi-purpose rock drill for drilling a wide range of geological conditions.

DrillMore's PDC bits and Tricone bits have been highly rated by our customers in many application scenarios. If you would like to learn more, please visit our official website (https://www.drill-more.com/) or contact us directly!