Drilling Rigs
The rig ranges
Rig selection follows the job, not the other way round. Each range below is built around a different drilling method and a different set of ground conditions.
- Conventional Rotary Rigs — the broadest range, covering water wells, geothermal, environmental and general purpose drilling. Includes the Fraste Multidrill XL, ML, PL, GT and SL series, the FS range and dedicated service rigs, on crawler, truck and trailer carriers.
- Conventional Foundation Rigs — the MITO series and FP 30, for piling, micropiles, anchoring, jet grouting and ground consolidation work.
- Sonic Rigs — the DUO series, from the compact PRS 70 up to the LRS 355. High frequency resonance gives fast penetration and high core recovery in unconsolidated and mixed ground where rotary struggles.
- CPT Rigs — boxed and compact crawler CPT systems from 100 to 200 kN, pushing a cone to record tip resistance, sleeve friction and pore pressure in situ rather than recovering a sample.
- Mineral Exploration Rigs — the MX range from MX 140 to MX 400, in crawler and truck mounted versions, built for core recovery at depth on exploration programmes.
- Window Sampling — the TEC11 EVO, Tecop TPT27 drilling mast and AMK TEC 03 penetrometer, for shallow site investigation with restricted access.
Choosing between methods
The most common specification question is rotary against sonic. Rotary is proven, economical and the right answer for most water well and general drilling. Sonic earns its cost where core recovery matters and the ground is awkward — made ground, gravels, cobbles, interbedded sequences — because it advances quickly without flush and returns near-continuous core that rotary would lose.
CPT sits apart from both. Nothing is drilled and no sample is recovered; a cone is pushed and the ground is characterised from the resistance profile. Where the deliverable is geotechnical parameters rather than material, it is faster and cheaper than drilling for them.
Carrier and access
Most ranges are offered on more than one carrier, and models with a T suffix are truck mounted. In practice access decides this more often than the drilling specification does: a tracked crawler will reach ground a truck cannot, while a truck mounted rig moves between sites far faster and is the better economic choice on programmes with many short visits. Tell us the sites and we will advise on the carrier before the drilling package.
Buy, hire or both
Not every rig needs to be owned. We run a UK drilling rig rental fleet for contract peaks, one-off projects outside your usual capability, and trials before purchase. Many customers own their core fleet and hire specialist machines — sonic in particular — for the jobs that need them.
Support after the sale
A rig is only as good as the support behind it. We provide UK-based service and support, spares and technical advice from the same organisation that supplies the machine, and stock drilling consumables including bits and core lifters for direct reorder. For hand-operated site investigation equipment, see Soil and Water.
Drilling rig FAQs
Specifying a rig
Rigs are quoted rather than sold from a shelf, because the configuration matters as much as the model. Tell us the ground conditions, target depths, hole diameters, site access and what the client needs delivered, and we will put a specification together. Request a quote or get in touch to start that conversation.