In the foundation industry, Geax has established itself over the years as a global leader in the design of compact and medium-size drill rigs characterised by great manoeuvrability in the construction site.

At the last Geofluid, in Italy in 2021, Geax presented a completely new product to expand its range of super-compact piling rigs: the DTC20. This new rig sits at the lower end of the DTC series of machines in terms of weight, being mounted on a 4t crawler base. It was the smallest piling rig presented at Geofluid but was nonetheless one of the highlights of the international geotechnical fair.

Project overview

During Geofluid GDI had the opportunity to speak directly with Geax CEO and founder Adriano Pesaresi who provided an overview of the DTC20 project.

"The DTC series was designed in 2006 to satisfy the growing market for compact piling rigs that stood out in terms of manoeuvrability, ease of transport, and low maintenance and running costs. The range's innovative architecture consists of a steel boom that supports a monolithic mast capable of independent vertical translation. This new concept of a boxed steel mast, which internally contains the telescopic Kelly bar, allows for higher rigidity, better stability (the Kelly bar is closer to the crawler base compared to an external Kelly configuration), and a reduction of noise during the tool discharge.

"Our goal with the creation of the DTC20 was to design a compact rig only slightly larger than the super-compact XD9 but similar to our DTC series in terms of drilling capabilities," said Pesaresi. "In fact, the DTC series are well known for their greater manoeuvrability compared to traditional drill rigs, thanks to their unique design.

"The DTC20 is a totally new concept and every single component has been redesigned compared to the other rigs of the series. The final result is a drill with a weight of less than 6,500kg, is capable of drilling up to 22m with a specific Kelly bar.

"Similarly, like our other DTC rigs, it allows for a wide variety of tool positioning which enables long-reach drilling to work over obstacles or low overhead drilling to work easily inside buildings."

International interest

Alessandro Baldazzi, Geax sales director, then went on to explain more about the new addition to the Geax range. "We have already received a lot of interest and several orders from many countries for the DTC20.

"It is an entirely new drill rig with an optimised design and high-quality hydraulics. The DTC20 is born from the large experience that Geax has maturated over the years in the design of performance compact drill rigs. When developing the rig, we have taken into account the feedback received from many customers around the world, and we are very satisfied with the final result."

With this latest addition, Geax is expanding even further its already large range of compact rigs that it is able to offer, with the intention of being able to establish itself more and more as the leader of this speciality sector.

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