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(Mr. Kolb). Okay, if you will look along
the wall here.
Remember, Andy told you before, all that steel that comes down,
it gets fit in between, you see where those steel plates are?
The strand goes between those.
Depending on the design by the engineer, they may go
on the bottom all the way up to the top of the piece there,
depending on the height of the beam.
And then, what they do is, they put, how many of you've ever
seen the movie with planes landing on an aircraft carrier
and they grab a cable?
That's how they stop.
We use those same kind of grabbers, they're called chucks,
to hold the strand from slipping through.
So we pull the strand by a machine, that's a hydraulic
machine over there, it pulls it to that 31,000 pounds
per strand, and then they put the chuck on it and it will
not allow the strand to go back in, all the way down
the line, one strand.
So what happens, we pour the piece in here, and then within
18 hours, a guy comes by with a torch and cuts the strand, and a
piece of concrete that's about 350 feet long or depending if
it's 178 feet, all the way down the line, will actually lift up
off the bed because you're putting all that, all that
tension from that strand will go right into the concrete.
And then the concrete becomes compressed.
(Dr. Toosi). What's the maximum length
that you can pour here?
(Mr. Kolb). Well, it's not a matter of
what we can pour, it's what we can ship.
One hundred and eighty feet was pretty spectacular.
And those pieces, they were 237,000 pounds, were picked up
by these two machines here.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). This is all poured-in-place
concrete, the walls on the outside are all ours.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). No, tilt up?
Oh, that's a precast, that's like swearing
at a precast contractor.
All these panels were made in those forms that we saw
in the other building, they're all precast.
(Dr. Toosi). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah.
Folks, you don't get an idea of how big these things are,
but I'm six feet.
These tires are almost six feet tall.
Each one, each one of these can lift 140,000 pounds
without going into its safety factor, so 280,000 pounds
between these two machines.
As you can see, in the prestress form, epoxy-coated bar on the
bottom, because that's closest to the, that'll be closest to
the bottom of the beam, and they want to make sure that
it doesn't start rusting or anything above that.
You see the strand that's inside has already been tensioned, and
what they're doing right now is they're putting additional rebar
that have to go in there and they're tying it to the strands.
(female speaker). Why are some of the
rebars, like, tilted?
(Mr. Kolb). Because they haven't come
back yet and straightened them all out.
See, what happens is, that's what these guys
are doing right now.
They just put them in loose, they build these what they call
cages, and then when they come down the line,
they'll straighten everything out.
Then my Quality Control Department will come in and
measure everything, then the state of Illinois will come in
and measure everything.
(female speaker). What's in that bucket,
[unclear audio]?
(Mr. Kolb). What's what here?
(female speaker). What's in the bucket, like he
was, like, applying something to the rebar.
(Mr. Kolb). He's putting grease,
he's putting grease at a certain area because they
call that de-bonded steel, which means they don't want
the concrete to bond around the steel at that point, and
then what happens is they put grease on it so that when you
pour to it the concrete won't grab onto the steel.
Those things that are going across the pieces, this is
what they call a box beam on a bridge.
They will actually take threaded rod that goes through the pieces
and tie the pieces that's on that side and this side and
this side, they'll bolt them all together and squeeze the
bridge together this way.
They do this on small county bridges, you won't see that on
the big ones on the interstate.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). They haven't straightened
them out yet.
That's what they're doing as they come along here.
See, they just laid the cage in there.
And the cage is loose and then now they'll come by here and
you see all those will be all straight.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). That's for, they call those
transverse ties, for pulling the box beams together.
This is all, all the welding here will go on.
(female speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, they're not welding
anything right now.
But as you see what happens is, on some of these beams
they're not all straight, sometimes they have skews
at the end, they have to build that skew right in there.
(female speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Right, because the bridge might
be going like this, so you don't build them straight like that,
you build them all skewed so all the pieces go the same way.
Once a piece is manufactured in here they pick it up, put it on
a truck, Quality Control looks at it before it gets poured,
Quality Control looks at it after it gets poured.
They bring it out to the yard and it'll sit out there, and
then they'll do any kind of little patching or cosmetic work
that has to be done out here, and then what'll happen is
Quality Control will come one more time before it ships and
they'll put a tag on it.
If they put a green tag on it, that means the piece can go.
If they put a red tag on it, that means it's rejected.
If they put an orange tag on it, that means something
has to be done to it.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Pardon?
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). No, they still mark it.
If it passes they put a green tag on it, that means it can go.
(Dr. Wahby). Where does PCI [unclear audio]?
(Mr. Kolb). PCI comes into this plant
twice a year unannounced.
They could show up today and say I want to see all your
Quality Control records, I want to see your batching records,
I want to see, you know, your shop drawings,
your piece tickets, everything else.
Then they evaluate each one of those things.
The same day they'll come out and check our batch plant.
They'll check the batch plant operator, they'll see that
he's not changing tickets or anything else like that.
They'll check all the inspection reports, and then they will
phsyically come out and measure those bars to make sure
they're in the right spot.
Remember I told you folks, when you cut the strands
on prestress it bends up?
See that beam, how it's cambered up like that?
That's because of the prestress strand inside the piece.
If it didn't have strand in there and it was that long,
that piece would go like this.
(Dr. Wahby). Under their own weight.
(Mr. Kolb). Under their own weight.
But when you put prestressing and you're putting artificial
stresses into that piece to hold that camber, it's designed to
have so much camber in there because when they put a road on
top of it, it'll come down to a certain point.
And then when the trucks pull over, if you're ever
on a bridge, bridges go like this, that piece is
designed to bounce.
Okay, questions?
You ready for the test?
(Dr. Toosi). Do precast and prestress
pretty much 50/50 of your operation?
(Mr. Kolb). No, no, this plant is probably
80% transportation, 20% other products.
By other products I mean housing and stuff like that.
Now it's, unfortunately, 100% transportation because
the housing market's gone.
(Dr. Toosi). It is good that you have
both of them.
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, it's one of the reasons
why we split our plant up like this because it gives us
the opportunity to go when other people are shut down.
[no dialogue].