Diamond Road’s Smoother
BY AsphaltPro Staff
Taking the bumps out of roads takes precise work; the team at Diamond Road, located in American Fork, Utah, built the Diamond Road Smoother to perform that precision grinding. Here’s how it works.
The Diamond Road team drives the Smoother to the project at posted travel speeds. Onsite, they activate the arrow boards located on the back of the equipment to guide motorists away from the worksite.
The onboard laser system and camera system allow obstacles to be marked from inside the cab. The machine’s profiler and computer system ensure a smooth road is created from the corrected road profile.
A 2,000-gallon water tank delivers cooling liquid to the cutter drum and helps keep dust down.
The 8-foot-wide cutting machine holds 480 teeth, affixed two-tenths of an inch apart. The diamond bits are designed to offer longer service life than carbide or other tips. A 4-inch taper on each end of the drum helps eliminate a vertical edge on either side of the grinding area. The Diamond Road Smoother grinds forward at about 30 to 40 feet per minute and is able to move between bumps at about 5 miles per hour when leveling wheels are down.
Two brooms on the sides sweep the tailings into a windrow of very fine material. A pickup broom follows to remove the tailings from the roadway.
After the Smoother, cities and counties can return the roadway to traffic, or can perform sealing or thin overlays without bumps in the surface.
For more information, contact Blake Attaway at (303) 913-4867 or visit http://diamondroad.com.
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