The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 28, 1993
Filed:
Aug. 21, 1992
Phillip K Jones, Houston, TX (US);
David Malone, Sugar Land, TX (US);
Schlumberger Technology Corporation, Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatus for determining whether an encoder of a borehole tool is jammed are disclosed. The borehole tool has a motor with a drive shaft which is coupled to and drives an encoder, a position sensor coupled to the motor for sensing the position of the motor, and a microprocessor coupled to the position sensor and to the motor in a feedback loop, with the microprocessor controlling the movement of the motor based on the sensed position of the motor and the desired position of the motor. The method for determining jamming includes: determining, at a first plurality of times, positions of the motor from the position sensor; determining position errors of the motor from the positions of the motor and desired positions of the motor as determined by the microprocessor; and determining whether the encoder is jammed based on whether the position error exceeds a threshold value. In determining jamming, the microprocessor can also determine the rotational velocity of the motor, and account is taken of whether the motor velocity exceeds a threshold velocity at a time when the position error exceeds its threshold value.