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Applications in earthworks, road construction and material processing can be solved profitably by our technologies. We explain how it works.
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Routing Operations

Cutting through Rock without Explosions or Dust

Blasting is common when carrying out routing operations on sub-bases of limestone, slate, granite, or other types of rock. This causes vibrations, noise, and dust.

In road construction, you not only find sub-bases that are too soft or not strong enough, but also those that are extremely hard – too hard to easily build a road on with the required profile. This typically applies to construction projects in the mountains and in other areas with rocky subsoil. In this case, routing operations must first be conducted.

The routes cut into the rock by the surface miner form the ideal road bed for the layers of pavement.

Going Easy on the Rock Formations

In locations where blasting isn’t even possible due to nearby houses, industrial facilities, or railway tracks, routes are now more frequently created by cutting the rock with surface miners. This more environmentally friendly method extracts the rock without vibrations.

Even as the carbide picks on the cutting drum continue to cut, the crushed stone is loaded onto trucks by a slewing discharge conveyor. Thanks to its uniform grain size, it can be used as a filler without further treatment. The road can now be paved without difficulty on the precision-profiled surface.

Benefits

Short construction time

Environmental protection (less vibrations, noise, and dust)

Increased safety by eliminating drilling and blasting

Surface Miners

Surface Miners can mine raw materials such as coal, gypsum, salt, phosphate, bauxite or lime in open-cast mines. They mine commodities selectively, ensuring a high quality and optimum exploitation of the deposit. Surface Miners are also used to cut routes or lower tunnel floors. Centrally positioned underneath the machine, the cutting drum has a customized design to match all customer requirements.

WIRTGEN Surface Miners

Job Reports

Wirtgen surface miners can do far more than just mine minerals. During the construction of the Chisholm Trail Parkway, they reliably chewed their way through hard rock.

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High-precision cut in the tunnel: In the Stammhamt tunnel, a Wirtgen surface miner milled a subgrade so level that the granular sub-base only had to be 10 cm thick.

Stammham tunnel

Site preparation

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