With the continuous advancement of global oil and gas exploration and development needs, the oil drilling rigs cardan shaft, as an important sub-field of heavy-duty industrial cardan shafts, has maintained steady growth in its market scale. At the same time, the industry is also facing multiple challenges such as fluctuations in raw material prices, upgrading of working condition adaptation, and control of operation and maintenance costs. How to realize scientific operation and maintenance of cardan shafts and promote high-quality industrial development has become a key issue concerned by the current oil drilling field.
From the perspective of market development status, the global heavy-duty industrial cardan shaft market maintains a steady growth trend. According to research data, the global heavy-duty industrial cardan shaft market scale was about 2.538 billion yuan in 2025, and it is expected to approach 2.852 billion yuan by 2032, with a CAGR of 1.7% in the next six years. As one of the core application fields of heavy-duty industrial cardan shafts, oil drilling directly drives the market growth of oil drilling rigs cardan shafts. At present, China has formed a relatively complete industrial system for oil drilling rigs cardan shafts, with industrial clusters formed in regions such as Weifang in Shandong, Ningbo in Zhejiang, and Changzhou in Jiangsu. Some enterprises have realized the localization of high-end products, breaking the monopoly of transnational brands, and forming comprehensive advantages in performance, cost and response speed. It is expected that the localization rate of the high-end market will exceed 75% from 2025 to 2030.
While the market is developing, the operation and maintenance management of the oil drilling rigs cardan shaft has become the key to ensuring the continuity of drilling operations and reducing operating costs. In actual use, due to improper design, installation or maintenance, the cardan shaft often has problems such as abnormal vibration, bearing wear, cross shaft fracture, and lubrication failure, which can seriously lead to the instability of the transmission system, cause unplanned shutdowns, and result in huge economic losses. For example, the falling off and jamming of the needle rollers of the cross shaft bearing are mostly caused by long-term overloading, impurity intrusion due to seal failure, material fatigue, or heat treatment process defects; while lubrication failure is mainly caused by aging of the sealing ring, improper selection of lubricating grease, or failure to supplement lubricating grease according to the cycle.
In response to the above problems, a scientific operation and maintenance management strategy is crucial. First of all, in the installation link, a laser alignment instrument should be used to calibrate the angle and axial deviation of the two shafts to ensure that the angle deviation is ≤0.05° and the axial deviation is ≤0.1mm/m. At the same time, a torque wrench should be used to tighten the bolts in stages to avoid abnormal force distribution; secondly, in daily maintenance, a regular inspection mechanism should be established to check the wear amount, seal status and bolt tightness of the cardan shaft every quarter, and supplement lubricating grease every 500 hours or 3 months. The grease injection amount is 1/3~1/2 of the cavity volume, and high-temperature lubricating grease suitable for working conditions (such as composite calcium sulfonate grease with a temperature resistance range of -40℃~180℃) should be selected; in addition, vibration sensors, infrared thermal imagers and other equipment can be installed to real-time monitor the operation status of the cardan shaft, capture early fault signals, and realize the transformation from “passive maintenance” to “active prediction”.
In the future, the oil drilling rigs cardan shaft industry will develop towards intelligence, lightweight and greenization. On the one hand, intelligent sensing technology will be widely used. By embedding wear monitoring chips in the cardan shaft, the accuracy of fault early warning can be improved, and the maintenance response time can be shortened; on the other hand, material technology will continue to break through. The application of new materials such as carbon fiber shaft tubes and high-temperature alloys will further improve the wear resistance and corrosion resistance of the cardan shaft, reduce its own weight, and reduce power loss. At the same time, the remanufacturing business will develop rapidly, forming a closed-loop system of “recycling – inspection – repair – certification”, which is not only in line with the “double carbon” strategic orientation but also can reduce the operating costs of enterprises.
In summary, the market development and operation and maintenance management of the oil drilling rigs cardan shaft are complementary. Only by continuously promoting technological upgrading and improving the operation and maintenance system can we give full play to its core power transmission role and provide strong guarantee for the efficient, safe and green development of the oil drilling industry.