ForConstructionPros.com

Daniel C. Brown

More than 700 contractors and visitors flocked to the Midwest Construction Expo and Field Days, an equipment show held in July at a farm near Melbourne, Iowa, northeast of Des Moines.     

Contractors took turns operating the construction equipment - including the latest in GNSS-based machine control systems - used to build a real-world wetlands project. The 14-acre project involved building an earth-fill dam and spillway structure.  Wetland grasses in shallow water behind the dam will filter out nitrates and sediment from creek water running across the site, according to Jim Ricken, owner of Ricken Tiling Inc., which has a $125,000 contract with the state of Iowa to build the project.

The hit of the show was the next generation in machine control technology as contractors literally lined up for a hands-on demonstration. Topcon had fitted two bulldozers, a Caterpillar D6R and a John Deere 700J, with its new 3D-MC2 machine control system, which automatically controls the dozer blade. The 3D-MC2 system includes a new Inertial Sensor that works with the GPS system and enables an operator to double the machine's operating speed and accuracy compared to conventional GPS systems.

Plus, Topcon mounted its X63 grade indicator system onto a Komatsu PC 200LC excavator. The X63 system employs two on-board GPS antennas, a receiver, control box, and base station to indicate design grade and bucket position on a display in the excavator cab.

Short return-on-investment time
Attending the show was Jon Thompson, the grading supervisor for Kelly Cortum Inc., an earthmoving contractor based in Norwalk, Iowa. Since last spring, the company has run a Topcon 3D-MC2 machine control system on a John Deere 750J dozer. "We used it on the Carlisle Care Center, a health care facility in Carlisle, Iowa," says Thompson. "It worked really well. The general contractor was so proud of our building pad that he took pictures of it. It was an L-shaped pad with a 1:1 slope down into a basement area.