Maintenance

Teach personnel best practices to keep screens from plugging with material during production. The new operator needs to know what a plugged screen means for production and how to fix it.

The liquid asphalt cement (AC) binder only constitutes about five percent of the total material in asphalt mix. But all too often, this binder can harden during storage, clogging the asphalt silo and creating clusters of mix no softer than the roads we drive on. Here’s how to unclog the asphalt silo safely.

Is your ground man stuck at the top of a nonfunctioning scissor lift? There are safety protocols to get him back to earth and some common maintenance practices to prevent scissor lift failure. This is the time of year when ground personnel, mechanics and other plant workers are busy gearing up for spring start-up. Not […]

Do you see a plume of blue smoke when introducing large percentages of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) to your continuous mixing process? If you still see blue smoke when introducing high percentages of RAP to your production process, you may be allowing the binder in the RAP to encounter the flame. Solution: Introduce RAP/FRAP differently.When […]

With the number of moving parts and many pieces of heavy machinery at an asphalt plant, employees must be on alert for safe operations at all times. Even when moving parts stop, safety should be top of mind. Susan Lasser, J.D., prepared an article for Products Liability Law Daily Dec. 16, 2014, that included the […]

It’s that time of year to check out everything around the asphalt plant. Because this issue of the magazine focuses on sustainability, let’s zero in on the recycling areas for a moment. Look at the vibrating screens that sort fresh millings or clumped recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) to be sized and prepared for use in […]

During the midyear meeting in Seattle, the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) announced that Oldcastle Materials—Montana Companies, based in Helena, Montana, had garnered a 2015 Asphalt Operations Safety Innovation Award for developing an asphalt drum non-entry rescue system. While that sounds like something to feature in our Safety Spotlight department, it pertains specifically to plant […]