Ajax Paving, in Flint, Michigan, manages government roads and non-easy personal responsibilities of paving concrete and asphalt from its headquarters and asphalt paints at a subsidiary in Fort Myers, Florida.
The company employs another 500 people and operates aggregates and aggregates, concrete and asphalt mixes in Michigan and aggregates and asphalt plants in Florida. Ajax Paving has been involved in famous projects, ranging from repairing Sanibel pavement after Hurricane Ian, rebuilding roads in North Port. , Florida, to meet the coffee cup challenge, I-275 near Detroit and the Florida I-75 Mega Project. Ajax Paving named the most productive entrepreneur to work for in 2021 through ForConstructionPros. com. environmental stewardship, in partnership with Road Forward, the National Asphalt Pavement Association’s (NAPA) carbon-free asphalt initiative.
But the company was also an early adopter of the 3D paving generation and has since established a program through its strategic implementation during an era of what had been, at the time of our December 2022 report with Jeff Robinson, Ajax Paving’s 3D paving. Manager, more than nine years.
3D paving differs from the 2D rule in that it not only measures the elevation of the ruler, but can also achieve paving of varying intensity, temporarily converting the intensity of the pavement and even the transverse slope if necessary, as is the case in an elevated supercurve. In this environment, a set of general stations is connected to the receivers of pavers, rollers and milling devices through a prism fixed on each device. The 3D coatings on each device involve a virtual style of work, allowing the apparatus to automatically provide style, adding slope, cross-slope and even compaction density.
This is a paving contractor to increase quality and increase margin while reducing budget, schedule, and work hours.
Some of the benefits come from automating the interaction between the on-site curtains, paver, and compactor. By harmonizing all those steps, paving equipment can achieve a steady production rate which, in turn, produces smoother pavement with fewer touch-ups and grinding.
“You need to avoid obstacles as much as possible and turning gears is almost always better than preventing,” Kevin Garcia, general manager of Trimble, Civil and Specialty Solutions, told ForConstructionPros in describing the paving process. Prevent it from sinking, chasing air voids with the weight of the ruler. Every time you avoid, there is a noticeable bump in the road. a maximum point, especially if it is next to a low point. These are prices incurred that you might not have budgeted for and that can cause you to exceed your buffer.
Asphalt compactor paints would look easier than finisher paints, but they also benefit from 3D generation to monitor the number of passes, degree of compaction and asphalt temperature. Very little compaction and asphalt will involve air wallet, leading to premature erosion. Too much compaction, as can occur when an operator loses track of the number of passes he has made and achieves more than should be minute, and can weigh and break down the aggregate on the asphalt. According to Garcia, asphalt overcompaction can also have a ripple effect when the paver pulls more and more in front of the compactor, which has to do its job when the asphalt is at the right temperature. This causes the terminator to stop, resulting in asymmetric puts that want to be milled.
In particular, 3D paving leaves very few paintings to complete. 3D concrete generation can regularly monitor the panning of the device at a safe elevation and direct the device to align it with the model. This line engineering, which is an impediment to the operation of the apparatus on site and produces effects that can help meet the needs of a smoothing premium. the flow and effects. Households consisting of lots are vital. State Department of Transportation (DOT) rules state that paver vibrators deserve to run between 5000 and 8000 rpm and deserve to run non-stop.
“Nine years went by, maybe even 10 years later, we started in the world of devices and paving,” Robinson said. “We didn’t know which way we were going to go between Trimble, Topcon or Leica. We did a demonstration among the and at the time, concrete paving wasn’t even something we were doing yet. We don’t even think about it. We were doing asphalt – they were doing a beta test. I talked to everyone in our company and told them they would inform us a lot.
Trimble arrived on site with Ajax Paving for the basic concrete paving test and, according to Robinson, “On the first day we installed a rope with engineers. At that time, I didn’t put the rope in place and just told them that if you painted on the first day, it’s older for you to paint the day of the moment. Since that day, we haven’t put a cord in for a concrete terminator. The following year, we went from one device to 14 devices.
Ajax Paving doesn’t use much three-dimensional asphalt on road projects where they are paid by the ton. In those projects, asphalt is cut to level.
“Most of them are airports, runways, NASCAR and things like that,” Robinson said. “These are more specialized things we do with 3D asphalt. “
The procedure of those not easy projects has been dramatically replaced thanks to 3D technology.
“Back then, even before me, when you painted on an airport tarmac, we’d put the rope in position and the ending was perfect,” Robinson said. “The asphalt came in and I painted it black. The concrete would come in and put in its own cable and there would be conflicts because the slope was too high or too low. Now we don’t have that anymore. They all come in combination in harmony. “
Airport runways are projects that require the smoothness and consistency that 3D pavement can offer. Trimble/Ajax Paving
Knowledge will need to be bidirectional in construction, and just as allocation needs move from cash to back office, assignment and knowledge of appliance functionality can return from the box to drive purposes such as work-in-progress reports, payment requests, quality control, business functionality control, and more.
Ajax Paving is found in the Trimble SCS900 Site Controller software. Through this app, a box engineer can quantify progress and manage device operations. Performance knowledge and build knowledge are stored on the device and can be extracted as aArrayTXT or ArrayArrayDXF.
“We’re starting, with the 3D paving apparatus, extracting some of the quantities and other information from it,” Robinson said. you can calculate the International Roughness Index (IRI). We used it a bit. We are starting to make many more maps with this knowledge, quantity mapping. And we’re looking to find out with Trimble how to generate the price for that for paving. It is a wonderful tool for earthmoving and dirt. We’re still running it to make it more wonderful for the paving world. The mapping component works: you can see where you’ve paved and get approximate amounts. We can correlate pavement with earthmoving knowledge to correlate our cut with our paving together. “
The Trimble generation can also work with multi-machine production line pavers and compactors for optimal results.
“We know that the Trimble generation will correlate machines,” Robinson said. “I have no idea about talking machines, it may have some value. We’ve tried tracking technologies on our trucks, but since our batch plants are on-site, we don’t have far to move the material.
The Ajax Paving 3-D program required capital and effort, and it’s up to Robinson to make sure the juice pays off.
“It’s been beneficial,” Robinson said. Jobs are being created faster and faster with fewer staff. I started from scratch, and now we are one of the most productive in the country with 3-D concrete and asphalt paving. It has been complicated at times, however, we are making a profit because jobs are created faster and faster, with fewer people. I left with nothing, and that made Ajax Paving what it is: one of the most productive with asphalt paving and 3D concrete.
This power can make Ajax Paving win business, as can the undeniable fact that they use three-dimensional pavements.
“The market is competitive, but the costs of fabrics are the same for each and every one,” Robinson said. “Monitoring its functionality and getting jobs done faster helps you win business. We found that three-dimensional paving is required in some tenders from major automotive OEMs such as Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Toyota. We make a lot of verification platforms for major brands – slip checks right away. There are flatness specifications that each and every manufacturer must meet.
At either site, Ajax Paving operates an armada or 3D printers to meet the needs of the owners.
The company operates a fleet of 24 size Gomaco concrete pavers and a Gunner paver.
All Ajax Paving asphalt finishers are CAT AP1055, which are incorporated with the Cat Accugrade GPS. Asphalt finishers are replaced or swapped every 3 years, according to Robinson.
With this additional equipment, Ajax Paving can be accurate to within a hundredth of an inch for airport projects and is accurate to within about 1 millimeter to meet the specifications of a control runway project.
But smart fortune can’t be bought at the dealership: smart skills and decisions are still needed to achieve optimal results.
Trimble/Ajax Paving
“On an asphalt task, you need to make sure you’re using a high-density screed to make sure the pavement is 92 percent compacted,” Robinson said. “If it’s less compact, it has rollers that seek to achieve precision. With concrete, we achieve this tolerance without problems because it is a single-layer application. But it goes both ways. With an airport project, most of the runways are concrete and asphalt underneath. For concrete, we have made choices internally to determine what is the maximum productive strategy to achieve the desired result.
But good fortune didn’t come overnight for Ajax Paving, and Robinson advises dedicating himself to three-dimensional paving in the long term.
“You have to be dedicated,” Robinson said. Build a stick. Having wonderful owners that generation has also been a good fortune for us. We started this business and spent millions and millions of dollars, and they never said no.