An earthmoving contractor in Tasmania is achieving fine tolerance results by adding an EasyGrade grader attachment and total station machine control technology from Position Partners.
Stade-Wide Earthworks is based in Brighton, Tasmania and specialises in road construction and reconstruction, stormwater upgrades, council work, vegetation control and demolition for clients across the state.
Recently the company acquired an EasyGrade grader attachment and Topcon LPS automated machine control system for use on its Cat 259D skid steer loader. State-Wide says this setup suits the business better than a traditional grader.
“We find the EasyGrade setup is ideal for the work we do, which is often on 200-300 metre stretches of road,” State-Wide manager Rob Dobie says.
“A standard size grader gave us too much overspill over the kerbs, damage to existing infrastructure and was generally too cumbersome in tight, built up areas.
“The box system on the other hand just picks up the material and carries it where it needs to go so there’s a lot less waste and tidy up,” Dobie adds.
“We also find we can construct new roads without having to close them as the EasyGrade is small and accurate enough to be able to work in one lane, using traffic management, which we have never been able to do with a standard size grader.”
The EasyGrade attachment is guided by a Topcon local positioning system (LPS) machine control unit which uses positioning information from a robotic total station nearby, rather than from a GPS system. LPS can provide greater accuracy than GPS in areas without constant open sky coverage.
State-Wide says the results have been impressive.
“Since installing the grader system earlier this year it’s been a great bonus, we regularly achieve 10mm accuracy for our road reconstruction and stormwater upgrade jobs,” Dobie says.
“Our use of stringlines and lasers is now down to a minimum, we only use stringlines for the kerb machine to follow these days.”