Equipment

IDDO maintains and operates existing ice drilling equipment and develops new systems with two principal foci:
1. to provide high quality ice cores, and
2. to produce boreholes that provide access to the interior and beds of ice sheets and glaciers for such purposes as embedding instruments, collecting gas samples, setting seismic charges, studying subglacial processes, and studying subglacial geology.



Current Inventory

Equipment Contact



Ice Drilling Design & Operations

Kristina Dahnert
Field Support Manager
Phone: 608.263.6178
Email: kristina.dahnert@ssec.wisc.edu

 

 

Requesting Ice Drilling Support

If you are preparing a proposal that includes any kind of ice drilling support from IDPO/IDDO, you must contact IDPO/IDDO ( IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu ) at least six weeks before you submit your proposal to obtain a Letter of Support and a Scope of Work/Cost Estimate, both of which must be included in your proposal.
[MORE INFORMATION]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Non-coring Drills

Project Schedules

Portable Hot Water Drill

These drills use hot water to create shallow holes in the ice. Primary use is for producing shot holes and shallow access holes. Transportable by light aircraft and helicopter.
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Project Schedules

Rapid Air Movement (RAM) Drill

Rapid Air Movement drill for the fast production of deep seismic shot holes approximately 100 mm in diameter to depths of 90 meters.
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Coring Drills

Project Schedules

2-Inch Drill

The 2-Inch drill is much smaller and lighter than the Badger-Eclipse Drill. The maximum depth to which this model of drill has cored is 42 meters. Core diameter is 51 mm.
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Project Schedules

4-Inch Drill

A cable-suspended electromechanical drill that retrieves cores 104 mm in diameter down to approximately 400 meters depth.
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Project Schedules

Badger-Eclipse Drill

The Badger-Eclipse drill is an electromechanical drill that takes 81 mm (3.25-inch) diameter cores up to 400 meters depth. The drill system is transportable by small aircraft or helicopter.
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Project Schedules

Blue Ice Drill

An agile drill capable of retrieving cores of approximately 9 1/2 inch diameter to depths up to 25 meters in solid ice.
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Project Schedules

Chipmunk Drill

The smallest drill in the IDDO inventory, it is a hand-held, motor driven coring drill that collects 2-inch diameter cores in solid ice.
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Project Schedules

Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill

An electromechanical drill system capable of cutting and retrieving cores of ice to depths of 4,000 meters. The cores produced by the drill are 122 mm (4.8 inches) in diameter.
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Project Schedules

Electrothermal Drill

This drill melts an annulus around the core. It supplements the 4-Inch Drills and can be substituted for the 4-Inch sonde for use in ice warmer than about -10°C.
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Project Schedules

Hand Auger

The hand auger is the most basic of the mechanical drills and is driven from the surface by a series of extensions that are added as drilling proceeds into the ice.
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Project Schedules

Koci Drill

The Koci Drill is designed to perform in ice with entrained sand and rock. The drill produces 76-mm (3-inch) diameter cores a few tenths of a meter long.
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Project Schedules

Prairie Dog Drill

A modified hand auger that includes a stationary outer barrel to allow operation in solid ice, as well as firn. The drill can retrieve cores 102 mm in diameter to depths of 40 meters (w/ SideWinder).
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Project Schedules

Replicate Ice Coring System

The Replicate Ice Coring System collects additional ice at depths of interest by deploying into an existing borehole and then deviating from it.
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Project Schedules

Sidewinder Power Drive

The Sidewinder is not a drill but rather a drive/lifting system used in conjunction with hand augers to extend the maximum practical depth of coring with a hand auger to about 40 m.
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Borehole Logging Equipment

Photo of equipment

Intermediate Depth Logging Winch (IDLW)

The IDLW is capable of logging boreholes 1500 meters deep, can operate at temperatures as low as -45 degrees C, and is transportable by Twin Otter.
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Photo of equipment

Logging Tower

This device straps to the protruding casing of a borehole allowing a sheave to extend up above the borehole (for borehole logging) with no need for any kind of tripod or crane.
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