Auger Prototype to Prevent Segregation
BY AsphaltPro Staff
Asphalt contractors are familiar with the concept of moving from one type of project to another in a week’s time. Or even from day to day. The equipment used on a golf cart path today could be used on a commercial parking lot tomorrow with the mere extension of the screed. The equipment is as versatile as the workers using it. But look at the project that forces changes to the screed setting mid-stream.
Look at the project that has a flare and a widening followed by a decorative median, all of which require the screed operator to move the tunnels and extensions in and out while the operator drives down the lane. There’s no time to stop and bolt on a new auger section or extension as you slide out an extra 2 feet when production’s on the line and the lane must be returned to traffic before a nearby school lets out this afternoon.
These illustrations for the N-TELE-AUGER show how the telescopic auger with its flights can slide in and extend out, layering over the existing auger assembly so the motion takes place as the paver moves down the lane. Please note, this version of telescopic auger is not the same design or concept as the old Blaw-Knox “Power Flyte” system of the late 1980s. Illustrations courtesy of Benjamin Everett
That means laborers are shoveling mix from the head of material to the end gate, risking damage to feed sensors and wires, and sending all manner of irregular mix levels under the screed. This is a recipe for segregation in the mat that paving consultant Benjamin Everett can’t abide. The tendency for commercial contractors to see segregation in their mats, thus get called back to do repairs for free, has been a bone of contention for him since he was working for the family business in 1985 as an entry level laborer doing just that; shoveling mix out to the end gates. He’s still at it today, paving everyday some 40 years later, but now he’s the proprietor of About Asphalt Limited, Auckland, New Zealand, with a crew of his own, and he’s been working on an engineered solution to this segregation problem on and off for the past 15 years.
“Basically, I got busy in more senior positions as time went on and kind of ‘forgot’ about those hard lessons I learned starting out as a young man,” Everett shared. “But I happened to be out on one of my own jobs one day, many years later and encountered the same issues after all these years. I decided right there and then I needed to solve this problem, so I engineered a solution; it just required a bit of thought.”
Everett holds patents in North America, Germany, Italy and England for the N-TELE-AUGER, which is a device he designed to address a problem he contends our industry doesn’t have to put up with. For front-mounted or rear-mounted screeds, this innovation offers a solution to potential segregation when extending tunnels on-the-fly because it also extends the auger, allowing mix to be churned and moved all the way to the end gate. He explained it differs from the late 1980s telescopic auger design known as the Blaw-Knox “Power Flyte” system, which had challenges to work around.
“I built a prototype in 2012 and fitted it and did three extensive field trials with it. However, I only did it on one side of the paver. This was because of the cost to do both sides with technology that wasn’t proven at that time. Now it is proven, and I want to do both sides of the paver with the other essential components I need to include to get maximum benefit out of the concept and to make it an outstanding benefit to those who will use the N-TELE-AUGER.”
These illustrations for the N-TELE-AUGER show how the telescopic auger with its flights can slide in and extend out, layering over the existing auger assembly so the motion takes place as the paver moves down the lane. Please note, this version of telescopic auger is not the same design or concept as the old Blaw-Knox “Power Flyte” system of the late 1980s. Illustrations courtesy of Benjamin Everett
This hasn’t been a smooth journey through entrepreneurship. In 2012 when the project began, Everett worked for a contractor where he could experiment and build. But his destiny wasn’t in his own hands.
“At the time, I was in a medium-sized family business based in Auckland, New Zealand, called Blacktop Construction Limited. I used one of their pavers to install and trial the unit. It was a Blaw-Knox PF-200 with a Carlson EZIV screed.”
When Blacktop ran low on work, the paver, and its screed and auger assembly, were no longer available to Everett. “I owned (and still own) the telescopic auger outright myself. But due to the messy situation with the auger being installed on a paver that wasn’t technically or legally mine, I lost the complete auger when the company Blacktop Construction Ltd. got into difficult trading conditions like so many others during the time of the GFC; work ran out.”
Kenco Engineering Inc.’s Foundation Drilling Auger Protection
Since then, Everett has met with many equipment frustrations getting this product tested.
“It’s a step-by-step process to get it up and running again. Firstly, I needed another suitable paver platform to install the auger on. I have that now; that’s the Barber Green BGP312. But I had to fully recondition it to a first-class standard to have a proper, reliable and quality platform to install and trial the telescopic auger on. It just wouldn’t do to try and install it on an old, worn-out paver that might break down all the time or that wouldn’t allow me to produce a top quality mat.”
Along with finding a reliable funding partner, Everett’s next goal is data collection. “This will be the next goal, along with good old fashioned ‘eyeballing’ the placed mat side by side with another paver that doesn’t have the N-TELE-AUGER or auger extensions on doing an identical job in a fair comparison.”
When it comes down to it, Everett’s main goal is to solve a segregation problem for the industry. His desire is to eliminate the need to manually hand shovel asphalt out to the end gates when paving wide widths but the job conditions prevent the installation of regular bolt-on auger extensions. That’s often due to narrow sections of work, which are still important to get right.
He also wishes to see this innovation provide confinement to the head of material. This, of course, has multiple benefits. “It will eliminate segregation caused by an unconfined head of material, as well as keep the head of material ‘live’ and hot with fresh, homogeneous mix instead of a large slug of cold, stagnant mix, which frequently occurs when trying to extend the screed wide without auger extensions and tunnel guards fitted. And as an added bonus, there will be substantially less asphalt to pick up at the end of each pull.”
He also wishes “to produce a substantially more uniform mat texture free of most imperfections or visible segregation and a much more uniform level of mat density across the full screed width. This is due to the fact that rotating augers tend to impart a level of pre-compaction to the material in front of the screed.”
By the time Everett gets to World of Asphalt at the end of March, he hopes to run into like-minded paving contractors, engineers and entrepreneurs like himself who can discuss the benefits of adding the N-TELE-AUGER to research and development plans in our industry to improve overall mat quality and output.
For more information, contact Ben Everett at benjamineverett88@gmail.com or +64 274 907070.