"An exception to that," notes Young, "would be the non-lube hammers, which don't lose performance over the life of its external components. They have seals and bearings that prevent any metal-to-metal contact, so the internal components don't see the wear that the standard tools would. But these hammers are fairly finicky. It takes a very clean operation to have them run the way they're supposed to run. Drillers with experience running that type of hammer love them. But if a driller isn't as clean with his operation, he'll likely have some problems and revert back to the standard hammers. But at some point down the road, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole market went to these products due to environmental legislation that would ban putting oil into the ground."
"Over the years, there's consistently been a trend toward higher volume air -- not necessarily higher pressure, but higher volume," Lyon explains. "We've seen a steady progression from 825 being the norm to 900, and now you're finding in some markets, 1050, 1070 is common. In some cases, people are going all the way up to 1250.