When many of my readers see the letters “HDD,” they think of the type of rig they might see in a suburb installing utility lines under a road or other small infrastructure. But, as with everything drilling, there’s always a bigger scale. National Driller recently attended the 2017 Underground Construction Technology (UCT) event in Fort Worth, Texas. We sat in on a presentation by James Pfeiffer, North America area sales manager for pipeline equipment for Herrenknecht. His “Latest Generation of HDD Maxi Rigs” talk piqued our interest.
Of course, large-scale HDD rigs aren’t new. But we though readers would like to hear a bit about the differences between the type of rig a small contractor might use and the huge “maxi” rigs that go to work installing our pipeline infrastructure. We sat down at the Herrenknecht booth after Pfeiffer’s talk with him; Michael Lubberger, senior product manager for pipelines for the Utility Tunneling business unit; and Dr. Gerhard Lang, manager for business development, Utility Tunneling business unit.