Oil & Gas wells run deep into the earth necessitating fast and efficient drilling. The very high cost of downtime means that manufacturers of Polycrystalline Diamond Compact (PDC) bits are under constant pressure to ensure that their products do not fail during operations.
GrafTech has been serving the PDC bit market for many years and thoroughly understands the customers' need to reduce cycle time between getting the field-geology report to having a bit designed, manufactured and ready for use. Our knowledge and understanding of our customers needs has enabled GrafTech to provide them a range of solutions.
GrafTech has tailored a high quality, consistent and easily machinable graphite grade especially for this market. We did not just stop there, but looked deeper and understood that in order to cut cycle time, our customers needed a supply of virgin graphite close to them. We immediately adjusted our supply chain to provide a stock of graphite stored at a location very convenient to our customers and able to deliver them product with minimal notice. And with our global manufacturing locations, we are able to duplicate this service to wherever our customers locate their operations.
Our understanding of our customers extends to more than just product needs. We realized that the success of our customers' business model was predicated on their ability to produce high value machined parts. So GrafTech set up a machine shop to produce parts, like funnels, that are consumed in the PDC manufacture process. This service allows our customers to concentrate on what they do best, and has increased their capacity to produce bits without the outlay of additional capital.
GrafTech's ability to extensively understand our customers' needs and provide solutions better and faster than our competition has ensured that the major PDC manufacturers use GrafTech graphite solutions.