NDS Drilling Supply

A drilling stabilizer is a piece of downhole tooling typically used at the bottom of a drill string.  It stabilizes the borehole and adds weight to the drill string in order to avoid unintentional sidetracking, vibrations, and ensure the quality of the hole being drilled.  All stabilizers are manufactured with premium alloy steel – featuring heat treated tool joints. NDS stabilizers are manufactured from a thick walled alloy steel pipe. We manufacture most API threads which are machined in strict accordance with American Petroleum Institute (API) Specifications.

There are two common types of stabilizers. A Smooth Stabilizer and a Ribbed Stabilizer.  

The smooth stabilizer is used primarily when drilling thru sand, gravel and other unconsolidated formations.  This is the most common stabilizer. 

The ribbed stabilizers are designed primarily for clay, shale or “sticky” formations.  The ribs help breakup the clay and shale sheets.  These stabilizers are designed to have an outer diameter equal to or slightly less than the OD of the bit. There are (2) downfalls to the ribbed stabilizer.  First, when encountering rocks and boulders, the ribs can catch on the rocks downhole and it can put tremendous amounts of stress on your top head drive, rotary table, water swivels and drill pipe.  Secondly, when drilling through gravel, sands and unconsolidated formations with a ribbed stabilizer, your drilling mud must be close to perfect with no recirculation of clay, sands or solids.  With poor recirculated mud, the ribs will be smearing this highly ineffective mud into these loose sand and gravel layers, which GREATLY increases the risk of hole collapse. 

Please click on the links for smooth stabilizers or ribbed stabilizers and let us know what size we can build your custom stabilizer.