SONIC DRILLING

Sonic drilling throughout
the UK & Europe

Sonic Technique

Sonic drilling 1
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Sonic drilling 2
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Our Sonic SDC550-18 drill rig (as pictured) is mounted on Caterpillar crawlers together with its Canadian patented Sonicor 50K drill head.
Sonic drilling provides a continuous, undisturbed core sample of unparalleled quality and accuracy through many types of formation.
By using high frequency vibrations, the sonic drill can produce accurate and almost totally undisturbed core samples from both solid and unconsolidated materials.
The sonic drill can quickly extract nearly perfect, highly representative, continuous core samples from surface to bedrock with a recovery rate in excess of 95%.
Core samples can be subjected to detailed inch by inch analysis to evaluate the potential mineralisation of the subsurface.
Cores can be obtained from a wide variety of mineral deposits with an absolutely minimal amount of disturbance and compaction.
The sonic drill performs extremely well in difficult soil conditions such as those containing boulders, gravel, clays, shale, permafrost and saturated sands.
Holes are drilled, cored and cased by rotating and vibrating the rod, core barrel and casing at resonant sonic frequencies.
The coring of unconsolidated material is carried out completely dry without the use of any drilling fluid.
Cased holes prevent the collapse of the borehole and ensure that cores are not contaminated by up-hole debris.
The sonic drill bores extremely straight holes as compared to a conventional rotary machine.
Cores are held in the core barrel by friction and by the use of suitable core catchers.
Retrieved cores are gently extruded by vibration into clear plastic sleeves which can be easily logged, sampled, photographed and archived for future examination.