The Application of Milling Black Technology in the Venice Expressway

Ajax Road-building Company utilizes

New technologies enhance the key road milling work

The project of renovating a four-mile highway and an evacuation route was carried out by Ajax Road Construction Company in Florida. It required full-width milling renovation and repaving, and some areas needed to be redesigned. During the milling work stage, Ajax Road Construction Company selected the black technology in the renovation construction field - SmoothRide variable milling/paving solution. By adopting this technology, the demand for the technical proficiency and quantity of personnel on the construction site can be significantly reduced. While ensuring the milling quality, it can greatly enhance the production level and overall construction efficiency. The milled surface reshaped by this cutting-edge technology provides a very smooth foundation for the subsequent asphalt paving.

This project is named the SR-681 Venice Connection Project. The main tasks of the project include a total of 8 miles of milling and resurfacing of the road surface. While ensuring smoothness and driving comfort, cross slope adjustments are required, as well as the rectification of guardrails and drainage systems, etc. To maximize safety, road surveillance camera equipment has been installed on the I-75 exit ramp leading to SR-681.

Ajax Road Construction Company has always been open to new technologies to improve and optimize the construction process, make the construction process smoother and increase efficiency. When the representative of Dobus Equipment, the local distributor of Topcon, approached Ajax Road Construction Company with the revolutionary solution SmoothRide variable milling/paving solution in the construction field, the company was very willing to embrace this innovative renovation construction technology and decided to apply it.

Ben Harland, the on-site technical manager of Ajax Road Construction Company, said: "Since the SmoothRide variable construction technology was introduced, we have been paying attention to and considering experiencing this cutting-edge technology in person, and the SR-618 project seems to be an excellent opportunity to put it into formal use."

We really like this construction technique, which is designed to simplify the construction process. Whether it is milling or paving work, 3D spatial positioning can be achieved by combining the height difference data provided by the precision positioning sensor with GNSS. The perfect combination of these two can offer us ideal and high-precision 3D digital construction effects, eliminating the need to set up measurement robots or other similar products on site. Of course, we are proud to be the first road-building company in Florida to own this technology.

At the beginning of the project, Ben Harlan used the Topcon RD-M1 road surface laser scanning system installed on a pickup truck to scan the four-mile north-south lane of the SR-681. It can easily and quickly obtain the required road status point cloud data without the need for road closure collection on busy highways.

In fact, we divided the scanned road sections into smaller segments to make it easier to post-process the data later. Even so, using the RD-M1 scanning method is still much, much faster than obtaining road data through measurement by surveyors. Compared with the way surveyors collect the elevation of the road section every 7.5 meters, using the Topcon RD-M1 laser scanner can obtain an accurate 3D (X, Y, Z) point information approximately every 15cm interval. This is definitely faster, more efficient and more accurate for us.

The full-width road surface scanning method implemented by RD-M1 can more accurately replicate the real undulations of the road surface, providing precise decision-making and implementation basis for the design and construction of renovation milling.

Largo, headquartered at Turtle Infrastructure Partners (TIP) in Florida, led the implementation of the milling work. He provided two Wirtgen milling machines (one W207Fi and one W210-Fi equipped with RD-MC variable milling system) for the Venice project. Brian Truitt, a mechanical monitoring expert in the positioning solutions division of Dobus Devices, said that TIP is also an indispensable and important participant in the application of SmoothRide technology in Florida.

He said: "TIP is responsible for installing Wirtgen's Level Pro leveling system along with the base kit (columns, antenna brackets, etc.) on the W210-Fi milling machine to support the application of the new RD-MC variable milling technology." It is particularly worth noting that Ajax can not only apply the RD-MC solution to more projects, but also clearly stipulate in the tender contract that any milling company needs to complete the milling construction in this way so that Ajax can smoothly complete the paving work. This ensures that the construction will be carried out in the best possible way, so it is a victory for every company.

TIP's Wirtgen W210-Fi, equipped with a 7-foot-wide milling drum and RD-MC variable milling solution, has helped Ajax achieve a production and construction efficiency of nearly 1,000 meters per day, which was unimaginable before. More likely, it would require overtime work and more mechanical equipment and manpower to complete.

Hunt introduced, "After using the RD-MC variable milling technology, the paving construction work after milling has also been greatly simplified." This is mainly attributed to the RD-MC variable milling system providing a very smooth surface to be paved, which makes the asphalt paving process very easy to control and simplifies the paving construction work.

Hunt said, "Using the SmoothRide technology can help us optimize and adjust the cross slope to ensure that we achieve the desired milling effect and paving thickness control." This is very important because when incorrect cross slopes are used for paving control, you may waste more materials in the paving operation. With the support of the RD-MC variable milling system, our paving process has been very smooth and full of confidence, and the reserve of excess asphalt concrete materials has almost been eliminated, which was hard to imagine before.