FH Paschen visited the AEC trade show booth to view our Allen BDFs at multiple shows from 2017 through 2019. In April of 2019, conversations became more detailed and specific between Mark Conte (AEC Paving Equipment Sales Director) and management of Paschen. Following an extensive review of the drawings for both bridge deck projects, the team at AEC was able to design tailored bridge deck finisher configurations for FH Paschen’s bridge deck pours.
Product Spotlight: Allen Model 6048 Bridge Deck Finisher (BDF)
Product Includes: Mile-Long I-294 IL Turnpike Bridge & LaGrange Rd Bridge Project in Chicago, IL
Contractor: FH Paschen
Each Allen 6048B BDF was built to a base machine of a 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 requirement for the LaGrange bridge structure.
The Mile-Long Bridge was the largest bridge project letting in Illinois state history. The project engineer 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. Paschen purchased two model 6048 BDFs from AEC’s dealer 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 widening over 13’ during the pour. The solution offered by AEC was 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 allowed the BDF frame to slide through the legs during the pour to use both end frame sections for the widening.
As of Summer of ‘20, Paschen has placed multiple decks for the Mile-Long Project, with each machine pouring every other span in the sequence. On the LaGrange bridge structure project, the bridge deck was placed in early July of ‘20 and the Allen machines performed as they were designed & outfitted with the proper features to “get the job done”. Both of these challenging jobs were a great success for FH Paschen & Allen Engineering.