subject: How the Flex Hone Works in the Oil and Gas Industry [print this page] How the Flex Hone Works in the Oil and Gas Industry
In the oil and gas industry, rebuilding or servicing large pumps, valves and cylinder bores is essential to ensuring outstanding performance and long service life. The challenge to maintaining large diesel engines or pumps is that once they're already installed in the field, it's difficult to find the proper tools to clean and maintain them. This is when the ball style flex hone is useful.
Flex hones can be used for cleaning, de-burring or surface finishing of pumps and valves in oil and gas operations. This tool uses a low-temperature abrading process that exposes the undisturbed base metal structure to produce a long wearing surface free of fragmented, amorphous or smeared metal from previous operations. In addition, the abrasive globules of the Flex-Hone each have independent suspension that is self-centering and self-aligning to the bore, as well as self-compensating for wear. Because of its ability to clean surfaces from remnants left behind by previous operations, flex hones are well suited for the maintenance of pumps and valves already installed.
Flex Hones for Pumps and Valves
Often times, after installation in the field, pumps and valves require maintenance to clean the inside diameter (ID) of foreign material ranging from rust and corrosion to accumulated chemicals and biological matter. Proper cleaning and surface finishing of the ID's of bores is imperative. If this is not done correctly, you can expect to experience degraded performance as a result.
The ball style flex hone is just the tool for this application. With its unique construction of abrasive globules laminated to the ends of flexible nylon filament, this tool can be used anywhere for sophisticated surfacing, de-burring, edge-blending, cleaning and rebuilding. The design of the flex hone is great for chemical, refining and natural gas applications because they often require honing to remove corrosion or the formation of clay, wax or other solids.
Deglazing cylinder liner walls of big bore engines is also a common application of flex hones in the oil and gas industry. In order to ensure long service life, it's important that cylinder liner walls are deglazed, refinished and crosshatched when engines are overhauled. With the flex hone, you can de-burr, clean out passages or provide IDs with a smooth plateau finish free of cut, torn or folded metal. The internal surface needs to be smooth and unobstructed in order to be able to control the flow of massive amounts of fluids and gases.
When you're in need of an affordable and durable tool for surface finishing of your valves and pumps, you can do no better than the flex hone. Flex hones provide the surface finish you need to ensure long service life and superior performance.
