As a leading manufacturer of mechanized rock and concrete cutting equipment including drum cutters and rock saws, Antraquip recently supplied three of its powerful AQ-5 drum cutters to one of its most longstanding customers in northern New York state. Although this contractor has performed many demolition jobs using Antraquip cutters over the years, this project was a unique challenge.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
For this project, the contractor was on a particularly tight timeline to complete the controlled concrete demolition of a wall within a lock which would need to reopen by spring to allow large ships to pass through the vital waterway to access the major cities in the northeastern part of the U.S. and Canada.
The customer mounted the AQ-5s on CAT349 excavators. The excavators were positioned on barges from where they would grind the concrete back up to a depth of up to 1 meter. This concrete was not your normal weathered concrete commonly seen on lock and dam rehab jobs but instead had a hardness of 55MPa (UCS) with steel support imbedded within the concrete.
As the machines worked their way down, the water level was dropped in order to access the deeper areas of the lock. The project required operation of the three machines around the clock despite brutal weather conditions with temperatures dropping to as low as -30 degrees F. Nevertheless, the entire project was completed well ahead of schedule in less than 1 month.
CLOSING THOUGHT
The use of Antraquip drum cutters was the ideal option for a project like this as the AQ-5s provided the perfect combination of high productivity and precision while eliminating the possibility of over breaking or micro fracturing that could damage the integrity of the lock walls.
For More Information:
Troy Geisler is the vice president of sales and marketing for Talbert Manufacturing. He has more than 15 years of Antraquip offers high production solutions with its heavy-duty cutters without having strict limits on the compressive strength as is the case with other models on the market. Along with projects like this, Antraquip attachments have tackled many demo jobs even operating in heavily reinforced material. For more, visit www.antraquip.net/products/aq-5-hydraulic-cutter/.
Modern Contractor Solutions, September 2021
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