Benefits

The top drive allows the drilling rig to drill the longer section of a stand of drill pipe in one operation. A rotary table type rig can only drill 30 ft (single drill pipe) sections of drill pipe whereas a top drive can drill 60 - 90 ft stands (double and triple drill pipe respectively, a triple being three joints of drillpipe screwed together), depending on the drilling rig size. Handling longer sections of drill pipe enables a drilling rig to make greater daily progress because up