With the U.S. construction market it still faces a labor crisis and other pressures to find more efficient ways to build, attendees of the concrete concrete world in Las Vegas from January 21 to 24 are looking for advances in the Automation and coordination between tools, equipment and software on the screen. About 58,000 attendees were engaged in the news of robotic solutions, tools with batteries and lines of refreshed equipment.
The new compact teams were in effect on the program, with an emphasis on increasingly difficult work with smaller machines. Higher demand hydraulic tools were observed and developing more comfortable cabins of the operator in the entire compact category.
Kubota had several compact equipment on the screen with improved hydraulic fixation capabilities. Photo by Jeff Rubenstone by Enr
The compact excavator of Kubota U17-5 now has a well-made thumb montage in the factory, which allows the attached files of hydraulic tool tool with a finer control. The excavator’s cabin has also been updated. “With the operator always at the helm of our mind, we have reduced the noise level of these machines,” says Bill Holton, responsible for Kubota products. The cabin also presents a repositioned monitor to be more in line with the operator’s view and the LED lights are now standard to work in low light conditions.
Although he was not yet ready to accept orders, a demonstration of a robot entitled a prototype was an important draw on the program. Sponsored by the Rebar-Tying Max USA tool maker, the little robot of Walking developed in Japan and is able to walk and pass over a receiving cage, using a camera to identify bar intersections and tie them autonomously.
With a flood of lower carbon concrete products that enter the market in recent years, there has been a greater pressure to establish which materials have really offer benefits of sustainability. The American Concrete Institute recently launched a program to examine the veracity of low carbon claims from concrete products manufacturers. ACI third -party experts will consider claims and issue a report. The program is part of the ACI snow initiative, which focuses on promoting and fostering the development of the neutral carbon concrete.
“We know that green washing exists in the market and has for a long time, and this is just a method of obtaining an independent and third party review of materials and technologies,” says Dean A. Frank, executive director of snow. The program is based on four different ISO standards, mainly ISO 17029, which covers the assessment of conformity. Snow will consider the low carbon claim of sent products and, for the moment, will only examine concrete materials. The evaluations will be published on the snow website.
There are many daring statements on the market on the performance of new concrete products, says Frank, but Neu set up this program specifically to address often complex claims and, sometimes confusing, with low carbons. “Basically claims must be related to the reduction of greenhouse gases,” says Frank. An evaluation can study alternative, agglutinating or aggregate cements, but also new healing processes and even carbon capture technologies or artificial intelligence software uses to reduce carbon emissions. Snow will not currently perform material tests for materials themselves, but will consider it in the future if there is demand, according to Frank.
Dusty Robotics Robot Design Printing Robot has improved navigation and print capabilities when setting plant plates for construction activities. Photo by Jeff Rubenstone for Enr
