Vol. 232 No. 11
NELL LUKOSAVICH, SENIOR EDITOR
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David Hall
One diamond, 500 patents
(and a hovercraft in between)
Although he holds more than 500 US patents, David Hall, owner of Provo, Utah-based Novatek Inc., will tell you he’s never worked a day in his life. With inventions ranging from a homemade plywood hovercraft to a high-speed drillstring communication network, Hall believes that the key to being a successful inventor is having fun with your job and never being afraid to fail.
His father, Dr. H. Tracy Hall, was on the GE team that invented the manmade diamond and later, the polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) drill bit. “GE announced the discovery of manmade diamond on Feb. 15, 1955, and that was my eighth birthday,” Hall said. “As a result, I have been involved, in the super-materials innovation process since the beginning.”
The elder Hall founded HPHT equipment company Provo Pressure Products in 1955, which later became Novatek. One of his spin-off companies was manmade diamond company MegaDiamond in 1966. “I take my philosophy from Thomas Edison, thanks to my father who was a big Edison fan,” Hall said. “Edison’s philosophy was to make lots of mistakes early on and in rapid order.” As a hobby, Hall entered engineering contests with a light-wing glider, a plywood hovercraft, steam-driven lawnmowers and self-moving boxes. “These projects were a lot of fun, and it is where I learned to love the process of innovation,” Hall said. “My grades in school were never that good, so my professors had a bit of fun at my graduation ceremonies by creating a new honor entitled the ‘Most innovative student’ award.”
After earning a master’s degree in engineering, Hall began his career at Ingersoll Rand in Princeton, New Jersey, developing downhole hydraulic hammers. In 1977 Hall and his brother joined MegaDiamond, where they introduced enhanced dome inserts for downhole motor bearings in roller-cone and PDC bits.
In 1987, Hall took over his father’s company and changed the name to Novatek. Hall wanted to know what the “top 10” issues were in the upstream industry, so he attended industry conferences and interviewed personnel at the largest upstream companies. “We found that a key issue was the need to transmit large amounts of data up and down a drillstring. That was our challenge.”
After receiving a grant from the US National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in 2001, Hall began testing acoustic transmission of data along drill pipe using a high-strength cable. The main challenge was to faithfully transmit the signal from one joint to the next. Three years and “30 ideas later,” he discovered that the key to making the system work was inductive conductor technology. Each joint of drill pipe is fitted with inductive coils at either end. When made up, a signal transmitted up (or down) one pipe joint to the inductive coil induces a corresponding signal in the nearby coil of the next joint, without direct contact between the two coils. The data transmission rate is about 50,000 bits per second, vs. a typical mud-pulse telemetry rate of 12 bps.
With NETL’s support, Novatek partnered with Grant Prideco to commercialize the technology. In 2005, Grant Prideco purchased a 100% interest in Novatek’s drillstring telemetry division.
Over the last 55 years, Novatek has received more than 500 patents and launched over 100 spin-off companies. Having expanded into mining, construction and transportation, the company has grown into areas that Hall could have never imagined 40 years ago. “If you look back at my father’s manmade diamond, you will find it used everywhere, from diamond bits to asphalt and cement scouring. Technology is interconnected,” Hall said. “We never know where it might connect next, but we do know that we are a lot more interconnected than we think.” 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dr. William J. Pike, managing consultant and contractor to NETL, contributed to this column.
nell.lukosavich@worldoil.com
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