My office this morning.
Been trying out Trimble's 3d asphalt paving system the past few days. Lots of parts, but it works. Tried Topcon, lots of parts, couldn't get it to consistently work.
Is it getting location and elevation from the robot or is it location from GPS and the robot provides elevation? How far apart can you set the robots.
James
Robots only. Around 500' seemed good. We were keeping an extra one set up for checking behind the paver.
Leicas concrete paving system is the bombdiggity, but we may go with trimble on this one. Ill be testing one out soon.
Trimble should include a Polaris Ranger with their system. Makes moving the robots and keeping ahead lots easier. They could paint one yellow.
What kind of data do you have to provide for the machine? I hope it is a surface. Leica was a point file and it had to have a point every 2.5' on each side of the pass. We had a spreadsheet and macro that made it not so much of a PITA but a PITA anyways.
I have read up on the way the different systems work, and have worked alongside the trimble robot system on a finish grader, sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
IN theory, I thought Topcon's mm/gps system seemed more versatile, and a better design idea for a jobsite, but have never worked alongside one.
Surface dtm. We are doing roadwork so its a road surface I created in Terramodel and run through TBC.
The theory of Topcon's system looks good, but there are some limitations. GPS wasn't a problem. They kept talking about the airport jobs they had done, but we aren't doing airports. The first spot we tried it was on a company owned road that is on a levee to one of the asphalt plants. Levee was about 15' high, 30' wide. According to Topcon the fan lasers had an optimum range of 15' up or down, and since the laser receiver has to be mounted high on the paver to see over the truck beds it's already 12-13 ft. off the ground, so there was no place to set them except on the shoulder of the road. The lasers have to be set on a control point with xyz. They recommended control every 500' for the lasers, with points in between to check. We first tried it on a Wirtgen mill, and when it worked it was good, but then it would stop following the model for various unclear reasons. Next site was a 4 lane section that was also on a fill, not as high. I had control set along the R/W but they wanted it further away from the road, so they set more out in a field. Same results.
The robots can be set wherever it's convenient and resectioned in. Control can be anywhere. Not limited by vertical. And it worked.
We've used the robots on a grader with excellent results, and an older robotic system on a trimmer.
Also got a free trip to Trimble Dimensions out of it.
> Also got a free trip to Trimble Dimensions out of it.
Cant beat free. Maybe a beerlegger one evening?:beer: :beer: :beer: