Equipment World Digital Magazine
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improve both safety and efficiency. With the design, the operator stays in the cab and doesn't have to be on the roadway while work is being per- formed. "If we can keep people off the street, then we help reduce acci- dents in work zones and send people home to their families," he says. In his discussions with contractors and municipalities, Yasinski is finding that road crews repair potholes at rates ranging from about 40 per week to around 20 per day. "This is reasonable when you consider three- or four-person road crews have to go out and set up their safety equipment and trucks and then get the work done," he says. "With our machine we're averaging be- tween 22 to 25 potholes per hour." Yasinski also says this can translate to less than half the cost per ton to lay down asphalt with a traditional crew. The machine performs multiple tasks, including applying a blast of air to remove debris from the pothole, applying a tack coat, filling the hole with hot mix, then compaction. The Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) used a simi- lar one-man pothole machine during the 2015-16 winter season. With its fleet of five machines, RIDOT was able to patch more than 36,000 pot- holes in roughly a year's time. The agency directly attributes a dramatic drop in pothole claims to the ability of these machines. In an average year, RIDOT receives 560 pothole damage claims. For the 2015- 16 season, they only received 151. "Pothole repair just one of those places where so much money could be saved and much better jobs could be done," says Yasinski. "There's no reason to have so many potholes out there. And there's no reason to have the public ticked off about what they see out there with road crews." The basics No matter the innovation, proper pothole repair still boils down to the basics of preparing a surface correctly, according to Dave Anderson, direc- tor of sales for the government business unit for Bergkamp. One of the big- gest failures he sees in traditional pothole repair is not applying a tack coat. "The tack coat does two different things," he says. "One, it seals the area. So if you've got a lot of mois- ture that comes up, the tack coat seals it out. Two, it also provides an adhesion bed to get your mix on it. That's going to be the same whether you're doing a spray injection or you're making the mix at the last minute and dropping it in." Contractors and government offi- cials often cite time and money as the main reasons why they don't apply a tack coat, Anderson says. "They look at this 'extra' cost and say, 'Oh, that's going to cost me.' As a good ex- ample, at $5 a gallon for tack, they're going to go through $20 a day. If they don't use it, they're going to go back for more repairs faster. It's a pay me now or pay me later scenario." He adds that crews using systems like the Bergkamp SP Series spray injection pothole patchers follow four steps: cleaning, applying tack, fill- ing and compacting. "When you go through that process, and you do it correctly and with the right materials, you've got a semi-permanent to per- manent patch," Anderson says. "Some people think they can take some of those steps out or take a shortcut, all under the idea that they've been do- ing it for 20 years. I don't care if it's 20 years or 20 minutes – if you skip some steps you've got the potential for problems." 3D printing asphalt robots? For a look at how potholes might be filled in the future, take a look at New Windsor, New York-based Addi- bots, which is proposing a robotic mobile 3D printer for this task. But instead of having material attached to the Addibot to print, the machine can use materials on a surface for construction. The company has developed four generations of prototypes, with the last used as essentially a 3D ice printer on an ice rink, says Robert Flitsch, chief executive manager. "These prototypes achieve proof of concept for many of the impor- tant systems behind our technology, such as surface repair applications like repairing pot holes and cracks in roads," says Flitsch. "We're now working on development of a fifth prototype that works with materials that will be used for repairing roads, such as asphalt or concrete." He believes his machines would be a step up in road repair work quality, as they would not require human intervention in the process. "With precision computer vision capabilities and high-resolution additive manufacturing methods, our robots can serve as far superior eyes and hands, vastly improving the skill of the workers using them in conducting repairs," Flitsch adds. "Besides improving the skill of our workers, they will also improve workplace safety for our workers." Providing all goes well, Flitsch pre- dicts he'll have a product to market in three years. July 2016 | EquipmentWorld.com 66 highway contractor | continued A fifth-generation Addibot mobile 3D printer prototype is being worked up to handle asphalt pothole and crack repairs. Image: Addibots