Patent 7506703 was granted and assigned to Smith International on March, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An expandable drilling apparatus is deployed upon a distal end of a drillstring and includes a cutting head and a substantially tubular main body adjacent the cutting head providing a plurality of axial recesses configured to receive arm assemblies configured to translate between a retracted and an extended position. A flow switch actuates the arm assemblies when a drilling fluid pressure exceeds an activation value and the drilling apparatus includes a biasing member to reset the arm assemblies when the drilling fluid pressure falls below a reset value.