The P60 Rotary Slope Climbing Rig, developed by Loglogic for Geotechnical Engineering, has won the Innovation award at the 2009 Ground Engineering Awards. The climbing rig (featured in Exploration Drilling, IM February 2009, p14) beat a group of finalists including Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering and Network Rail. Loglogic’s Sales Director, Graham Mitchell who received the award in London said, “we are extremely proud that a product designed and built by us has won such a prestigious award.”

The P60 is a track mounted drilling rig capable of undertaking dynamic sampling and rotary drilling on slopes. It allows teams to core to depths of up to 50 m. The machine consists of two self propelled, steel tracked, diesel-engine vehicles that can operate and travel independently, and come together at the borehole to provide a large drilling deck. Both units have a unique tilting deck mechanism allowing them to manoeuvre on slopes of up to 52°. They can also self-level, using sensors to automatically adjust the hydraulic tilt rams.

The award judges said, “we liked this enormously because investigating slopes is at the heart of difficult ground engineering. Getting rigs on slopes can be complicated and expensive. This machinery has lots of well developed ideas and addresses many health and safety issues.”

Loglogic is a 20 man design and manufacturing company based in Devon in the UK. Marcus Frankpitt, Managing Director: “We have 20 years of design experience, the latest solid modelling software and highly skilled production staff. This means that we can design and manufacture bespoke products that satisfy very varied requirements.”