Brief
Florida-based rebar contractor Shelby Erectors is achieving significant cost and time savings with Advanced Construction Robotics’ TyBot robot, which locates itself autonomously to tie as many as 1,100 intersections in an hour. Shelby will soon introduce IronBot, which transports and places rebar bundles weighing as much as 5,000 pounds.
Insight
Davie, Fla.-based Shelby Erectors is a bridge rebar contractor, competing and winning in Florida’s market for government highway and transportation projects.
Founded in 1997, the company now employs about 100 and has a backlog of $25 million. The company works extensively on bridge projects, including the $2.3-billion, 21-mile-long Orlando I-4 Ultimate project. They have also completed rebar work on the Starship Launch Mount 2 for Space-X.
In projects over the last two years, they have leveraged new technology from Advanced Construction Robotics that automates the tying of rebar, freeing up crews for other tasks. This has delivered a measurable return in terms of cost and timeline savings, and has helped Shelby Erectors win business, including rebar work on the Wekiva Parkway project on Florida’s beltway.
The Advanced Construction Robotics TyBOT robot self-locates, self-positions and ties up to 1,100 intersections per hour.Shelby Erectors also plans later in 2022 to implement IronBOT, a rebar placing robot that carries and places rebar bundles weighing up to 5,000 pounds, enabling rebar contractors to increase productivity by up to 250%.
Robot for Rebar
Bridge ironwork, constructing the rebar framework that reinforces a concrete bridge, is not easy. Even before rodbusters can put iron rebar in place according to the structural plan, it must be hauled over to the deployment site manually. This requires a crew of several rodbusters to grab up lengths of rebar, sharing the load.
Then comes the arduous process of tying the rebar together for rigidity, which means hours spent bent over the steel framework, inviting back problems.
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