Exploration drilling is one of the more punishing environments any tool will face: corrugated tracks, shipping container freight, swing-crew handling and operating temperatures from coastal heat to inland cold. Drill rig accessories, handling jigs, sample tools and core-orientation hardware must survive all of it and pack down for FIFO logistics.
Additive manufacturing has steadily absorbed this category of work, particularly the long tail of rig-specific tooling that no commercial supplier produces in volumes that justify dedicated injection tooling. The points below capture how we approach the brief.
Design for the container, not the workshop
FIFO kit spends more time in transit than in use. Volume saved at design time is freight saved on every rotation, and bulky one-piece designs eat container space that could otherwise carry consumables, samples or core trays. A five-minute review focused on 'how does this pack?' typically eliminates 30 to 40 per cent of the shipping cube.
Hinged folding bodies that flatten for stacking,
Two-piece assemblies that bolt together on site,
Modular jigs that share a common parts kit across rigs,
Stackable feet so transit cases nest in a sea container,
Common M6 and M8 socket-cap fasteners throughout.
Pick materials for mixed climates
Crews work across coastal humidity, central-desert dryness and alpine cold in the same swing, and a single jig may move between all three in a fortnight. Materials need to perform reasonably across the lot, with no surprises in the morning after a cold night. PLA softens in the cab of a parked ute, ABS warps under UV, and unfilled PETG creeps under load; none of them belong on a rig. We draw on the OzFDM engineering range and pair the right grade to the duty.
PA-GF for general structural jigs and fixtures,
PA-CF for stiffness-critical alignment tools,
ASA for items stored outdoors near the rig,
TPU for pads, gaskets and shock absorbers,
Avoid PLA, ABS and unfilled PETG entirely.
Design for field repair
The best jigs are designed with field repair in mind from the first sketch. Wear surfaces should be detachable, fasteners should be common across the kit, and spare components should be orderable on their own rather than as full assemblies. A jig that can be repaired on a rig pad with the unit-issue tool kit is worth far more than one that has to fly back to Perth, queue at the courier, and return to a different camp three weeks later.
Detachable wear pads and sacrificial liners,
Standard hex sockets sized to a unit tool kit,
Loctite-marked critical fastener positions,
Component-level spares catalogue with QR labels,
On-rig print-files supplied for small consumables.
The brief for rig kit is rarely 'make it last forever'. It is 'make it survive the next rotation, ship cleanly, and repair on site with the kit the crew already carries'. Designs that respect those three rules outlast designs that chase peak performance and ignore the logistics tail.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Pack-down volume is freight cost on every rotation,
Engineering filaments earn their keep where commodity grades fail,
Field repair beats Perth-and-back logistics every time,
Common fasteners and clear documentation extend service life.