FH Paschen had some company representatives come to Las Vegas for the Con Ex 2017 show to see the Allen Paving Equipment & specifically the BDF Paver on display. They were to return each following year in Vegas at the WOC shows to look at our equipment & discuss their equipment needs in more detail.
Our discussions began for their specific project needs in April of 2019, with the project starting in the Spring of 2020. Following an extensive review of the drawings for both bridge deck projects, we were able to pinpoint what type of options FH Paschen would need for their (3) new Allen 6048B BDF’s to pave their bridge decks according to the engineering specifications.
Each Allen Engineering 6048B BDF was built to a base machine 40’ length with the operator console on the 18’ Section & 22’ Section for the Idle End. The reason for the 22’ Section on the Idle End was to accommodate the amount of widening that would occur during certain pour sequences on the Mile-Long decks and for the extreme widening for the LaGrange bridge structure.
The Mile-Long Bridge was the largest bridge project letting in Illinois stat history. The engineer had designed the bridge surface with multiple grade breaks and an offset crown. Paschen had decided that the best course of action would be installing multiple Manual Crown Adjusters to set the machine frame points to coincide with the grade breaks. The crown point was 1.5%, then the grade breaks went to 2%, 2.5%, 3% then to a 4% shoulder lane, the 4% required the machine to be equipped with Pivot Leg Plates. They purchased (2) machines for this project to keep up with the demanding pour sequence schedule.
The LaGrange Bridge Structure presented additional challenges that Paschen needed to confront. The challenges were a bridge deck surface with 6% cross-slope (this required the Pivot Leg Plate Option), 40 Degree Skew Angle and the Bridge Deck Structure widened 13’ during the pour. Our solution was to install a Power Widening System on one of their Allen 6048B BDF’s. On any standard deck machine paver, the widening would occur with the standard leg travel, but because of the severe skew angle, the widening needed to occur from both sides of the machine. The power widener would allow the machine frame to slide through the legs during the pour to use both end frame sections for the widening.
They have placed multiple decks for the Mile-Long Project, with each machine pouring every other span in the sequence, while the LaGrange bridge structure was placed in early July and the machines performed as they were designed & outfitted with the proper features to “get the job done”. Great success for FH Paschen & Allen Engineering.