Road paving, or as we often refer to it as road printing, is a somewhat clever method of laying brick roadways that the Dutch have successfully devised.
The Tiger Stone Paving Machine is an autonomous brick paver developed by the Dutch industrial company Vanku that creates brick roads on its own. Nicknamed “road printer” because of its mechanism, the machine has brought much relief to the workers doing it manually and has made the process much more efficient.
Though it’s difficult to comprehend, picture a device that could produce brick roads with patterns in widths of 13, 16, and 20 feet. Bricks are fed into an electric machine’s hopper by forklift operators.
How Does The Brick-Laying Machine Work?
Bricks are fed into the hopper by workers—typically no more than three—who are situated on a catwalk just above the prepared roadbed. Gravity then mechanically compacts the bricks together. The brick road is then slid by the machine onto a sand base that is situated between two curbs.
As it advances, the device may alter the bricks’ pattern to create herringbone, side-by-side, or any other combination of patterns. According to the business, a crew can create over 300 m2 of stone roads every day using this method, which is far more efficient than using a standard paver, which can only produce 75–100 m2 every day.
Brick roads with a width of one to six meters may be produced using this equipment. Because it runs on electricity, it makes very little noise, and the environmentally friendly model, the most recent model, can run continuously for seven days on a single charge.
Furthermore, Tiger Stone requires less maintenance because it has fewer components that move. It can be purchased in widths of four, five, and six meters, and costs vary roughly from $80,000 to $110,000. It is produced in a variety of sizes.
The paver can travel at a speed of 13 feet every minute and pave over 5K tiles in a typical workday. The gadget is incredible, but for a state like Michigan, it’s unusable. It would never be used on major, fast-moving highways or any other route that requires snow plow maintenance.
Where Can It Be Used?
At the same time, It could be acceptable for private driveways, town squares, clubhouse drives, minor highways, and charming residential streets—or even as a means of traveling to the Emerald City of Oz.
Seeing the machine work its way through the work of paving is a fantastic feat. Being typically used for streets with slower traffic, it certainly adds a sort of aesthetic effect to the streets. Nicknamed “Road Printer” this has indeed been beneficial for workers who have had to do this work manually for years.
Source List:
- https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/tom-greenwood/2015/11/12/greenwood-quick-brick/75687904/
- https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news/a-paving-machine-makes-laying-brick-roads-as-easy-as-it-gets