SHAWN HUTCHINGS
ASPHALT ANSWERS
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF A TELESCOPING BAR ON AN OIL DISTRIBUTOR TRUCK?
SHAWN HUTCHINGS
O il distributor trucks play a large role in asphalt road maintenance and road building. These trucks are used for things such as applying chip seal oil, spraying emulsion for tack coating between asphalt lifts and top coating asphalt roads with sealants also known as fog sealing, just to name a few. In each of these applications, the distributor truck needs to not only have a high production rate but it must apply these various products with precision. If the truck isn’ t very precise with the spray application, it can miss your yield target, which in turn will possibly lose your margins calculated for the project or even lower the quality of the final product you’ re trying to achieve. A precise, well-tuned distributor truck can help you bid jobs more accurately and help you manage product delivery needed to complete your project. The distributor truck has a few components that play a role in achieving the precision demands in today’ s jobsites. Asphalt pump controls: Although most distributor trucks have manual pump controls, it’ s best to let the processor control the product pump automatically based on factors such as travel speed, desired application rate, spray pattern width and engine rpm. Travel speed sensor: Travel speed is registered through a speed sensor that can be GPS, radar horn or pulse pick-up. I have found the radar horn to be the most accurate. Asphalt pump speed sensor: Asphalt pump speed sensors record the gallons or liters per minute back to the processor so it can do its work processing the needed gallons or liters per minute required for application rate, travel speed and desired spray width. These sensors are typically pulse pick-up style and mount at the asphalt pump or asphalt pump drive motor. Spray bar: The spray bar is the final component to touch the product being applied. Spray bars come in varies sizes and styles. The two main styles are telescoping and folding. Folding spray bars are designed to fold up for transport and fold down to achieve larger spray widths than when they are folded up. Folding spray bars have one-foot on / off spray controls that when turned on spray three 4-inch wide spray pattern nozzles to make up the foot worth of spray pattern. If you desire less than a foot spray width, you will need to exit the cab of the
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