I was at the VFW hall yesterday and one of the guys there is a tool and die maker at Caterpillar and a retired Army engineer corpsman. The guy has a very interesting idea on making a device he says can stop the oil leak. What it is is a huge split die with a conical-shaped arbor attached. He said if they cut the riser pipe then the die can slide over the pipe and close hydraulically to grip and seal on the pipe and then a hydraulic ram controlling the cone-shaped arbor would force the arbor against the center of the die to plug the hole. The drawings he made reminds me of a tube flaring tool but rather than being a two piece flaring tool it is a one piece device which is operated by electric powered high pressure hydraulics. He said the shop he works in could design and build a device like that in a matter of days and it seems to me that something like that would work. If I could reproduce his drawings here, I think some of you might agree. But what do you think just based on what I described?
Could this idea work to stop the oil spill?
- Thread starter Kenny D
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