Wirtgen W 210i: A good grip on the TT Circuit Assen

The 4.5-km circuit can accommodate 100,000 spectators and is currently the only world championship track designed specifically for motorcycles. After years of racing, undulations between 3 and 8 mm high had formed along the start and finishing stretches. As a result, when drivers braked before turns, their motorcycles would begin to judder and become uncontrollable. This posed an excessive safety risk for drivers and it was therefore necessary to profile the raceway over an area of 3,000 m² to restore the surface’s skid resistance.

It was a classical application for super-fine milling and GMS, a specialist in this domain, once again opted to use this established technology from market leader Wirtgen. Super-fine milling removes surface deformations from the roadway to produce uniform, level surfaces.

“We elected to use a Wirtgen W 210i cold milling machine with an FCS LA 6x2 super-fine milling drum. Unlike a standard milling drum, it is fitted with 672 cutting tools rather than the usual 168,” explains Ernst Kugel, Site Manager at GMS. In contrast to standard milling drums, super-fine milling drums – also referred to as micro fine milling drums – have tool spacing of less than 6 mm. This enables them to produce a very finely textured road surface with a maximum milling depth of 3 cm.

Great flexibility thanks to FCS

With its Flexible Cutter System, or FCS for short, Wirtgen additionally offers the ideal solution for switching between milling drums with different tool spacings or working widths to cater to different applications. Drums can be changed quickly in just a few swift moves. That is a major advantage and key factor for the efficient operation of large milling machines, as GMS General Manager Torsten Meyer points out: “It’s important for us to be able to use the machines flexibly and thus cost-efficiently.”

The rehabilitation project on the TT Circuit in Assen is a perfect example. GMS additionally used the Multiplex leveling system on this job, which is ideal for super-fine milling work, because it measures extended longitudinal irregularities by combining several sensors on one or both sides of the machine (e.g. cable, ultrasonic and cylinder sensors). The current milling depth is calculated with utmost precision from the mean of the connected sensors. Longitudinal irregularities can therefore be leveled out very effectively, achieving high-precision leveling results. Site Manager Kugel was naturally very pleased: “The quality of the road surface is very good; we could not detect any residual unevenness.”

It is not surprising that, in addition to the right technology for the application, GMS also chose the right cold milling machine: A Wirtgen W 210i with the innovative Operator Comfort System (OCS). This system offers an outstanding degree of comfort, convenience and user-friendly machine operation. One central element of the OCS is the hydraulically moving and swiveling cabin, which shifts quickly and efficiently into a position that offers the machine operator optimum visibility at all times. The cabin’s high-quality interior leaves nothing to be desired: “Camera transmission, precision joy-stick control and a powerful automatic climate control system provide for the ideal working environment, regardless of weather conditions,” says Machine Operator Jürgen Dielefeld, summing up the advantages of the Operator Comfort System.

In the end, it was the combination of premium equipment, innovative technologies and the concentrated work of everyone on the team that restored the right grip to the motorcycle race track. “We were able to complete rehabilitation work without significantly interrupting the racing schedule,” boasts Site Manager Kugel.