Our research and development effort is currently harnessed in support of our new Geochain Slim system, which we expect to be an important addition to our product range. We are already examining ways to extend the capability of both Geochain and Geochain Slim which should ensure that our systems meet customer's needs and ROI expectations.
Long term product support
The blistering rate of semiconductor development is mirrored by an accelerating rate of component obsolescence. In addition, even relatively standard semiconductor devices regularly evolve into smaller and usually physically incompatible packages. The expected useful lifetime of our systems is fifteen to twenty years. Planning for the whole-life support of these systems is challenging. We have adopted a strategy of functional equivalence such that if any sub-assembly becomes impossible to manufacture in the future, we must be able to replace it with a new functionally equivalent design.
The Advanced Sparker Tool (AST) has been developed to provide a high energy and a repeatable down hole seismic source. Primary use of the AST would be with seismic sensors deployed in an adjacent well or wells to provide cross well imaging or sensor orientation.
Repeatable High Energy Down Hole Source
TSP2
A recent obsolescence management project was the re-design of our TSP unit, used for high resolution geophysical surveys in tunnels. Twenty-eight of the original units were sold, but facing obscelescence problems of his own, the client asked if size and power consumption could be reduced at the same time as providing more channels for a lower cost. The original eight year old design comprised a half-rack fitted with up to eleven sub-modules and used 20 bit converter technology. By leveraging the very latest semiconductor technology we were able to produce a new twelve-channel design using 24 bit converters, constructed onto a single module and offering much lower power consumption at a lower unit cost.
