MCM Hits Hard
Reported From: APE Western (CA)
MCM Construction of Northern California is one of the largest bridge building contractors on the West Coast. They just landed the S.F. Bay Bridge Touchdown project in Oakland, CA. Jim Carter, President of MCM Construction, chose a APE D180 diesel hammer to drive his 6’ diameter pipe pile for the foundation of this project. George Stevenson, MCM Lead Engineer, designed the Bottom Drive System to accommodate the tight clearances of the pile to trestle tolerances. The complete driving system with the APE 54” leads, the APE D180 and the MCM Bottom Drive all work together for a clean piledriving set up.
The APE D180 is set up with a hydraulic tripping system that pushes the trip from the bottom of the hammer. This unique design keeps the hammer shorter, enabling them to use a shorter section of leads. This is critical when you have 130,000lbs of piledriving equipment hanging from your hook.
In addition to the driving system it was decided to operate the APE D180 using Bio-Fuel and Bio-Oil making this hammer environmentally friendly. Randy Smith, MCM Superintendent, consulted with APE on the critical specifications to ensure maximum performance of the D180 using this bio-fuel.
Randy Notnegel, Piledriving Superintendent for MCM Construction, put the D180 into action using an APE 260 Power Unit to operate the tripping device. With this power unit it takes approximately 12 seconds to trip the hammer from start to finish and Randy knows his business as he set the first 6’ diameter pipe pile in the template and drove it home with the APE D180 Bio-Diesel Hammer. Absolutely Flawless!
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