Cold planers advantages and uses
High-wear roads often exhibit potholes, severe cracks, reduced skid resistance, ruts, etc. That can trigger loss of traction or control of a moving vehicle resulting in asphalt overlay as a solution to the problem.
Asphalt overlay without proper surface preparation will often result in layers that don’t adhere properly and don’t meet operable standards due to factors such as differences in elevation levels.
Milling of pavement and concrete is a method that allows removing a failed surface to open the possibility of adding a new overlay with a longer lifetime, higher performance, and operation.
Cold planers called milling machines or profiling machines employ a grinding process employing a rotating segment provided with teeth that fragments layers of pavement or cement to the desired depth. Not using heat directly eliminates the unwanted emission problems from burning asphalt bitumen produced by other methods.
When using a cold planer, old layers of asphalt are usually removed to a certain depth, which favors the restoration of the surface without grooves, cracks, and imperfections, providing a better bonding surface for the new pavement.
The main advantages offered by cold milling machines are:
- Substantially improves the workability of the material.
- Provides reclaimed asphalt pavement for subsequent recycling operations.
- Substantially reduces traffic disruption compared to conventional surface tearing and shredding methods that employ multiple equipment at different stages.
- Provides a slip-resistant surface that can be used temporarily until a new coat is applied.
- Optimally removes deteriorated pavement that is unable to retain the pavement of the layer to be overlaid.
- Allows gutters to be maintained or re-established as job-site requires before hot mix asphalt is applied.
In turn, the disadvantages that are common in these equipment will be:
-There is usually foreign object damage in the vehicle. -Its use is limited to strictly solid materials. -This usually reduces the depth of fixed reinforcement structures on paved surfaces. -High production of fine elements.
Before acquiring or renting a cold planers machine as a minimum requirement, make sure you properly know the width of the surface that you want to be grinding, as well as the depth you want to obtain to compare it with the dimensions of the rotor and its maximum depth. In this way you’ll be able to estimate the use that you will give to the vehicle in each project.