Carlson Machine Control debuts 2 pile driving programs for solar market

Carlson Machine Control, a company specializing in land development and associated machine programming, released both a new automated solution for placing structural piles and a new upgrade to its PD Grade Solution for accurate pile placement, PD Grade 3Z. The former, the Pile Placement solution, includes Carlson’s specialized Grade software that provides real-time on-screen views to the operator

“This solution is just a very powerful addition to any solar installer’s fleet,” said Carlson’s Field Application Engineer Rodney Thomas. “It’s versatile, flexible, and with its simple user interface, operators can be placing piles accurately with very little training.”

With the ability to accurately place color-coded piles to the proper offset at the planned location, the time and cost of flags and their associated survey work are greatly reduced, if not eliminated, the company stated in a press release. Carlson Pile Placement consists of an all-in-one GNSS (global navigation satellite system) sensor and a Windows-based control box. With its small footprint, Pile Placement can be installed on any machine used to drop off piles, allowing the same equipment and operator to now place piles at correct locations ahead of pile driving machines.

Pile Placement can be used as a standalone system, or as part of Carlson’s solutions for solar installation that include Carlson’s just-announced PD Grade 3Z positioning solution for pile driving machines, Carlson Command site monitoring and management software, Carlson’s GNSS base station and Carlson Grade Supervisor for more accurate quality control in the field.

“PD Grade 3Z takes our popular and field-proven solution for pile driving machines and greatly improves the elevation accuracy,” said Tim Jones, Carlson’s director of machine control. “With this improved version, users can achieve elevation tolerance more consistently while driving — saving significant time and money spent on remediation and rework.”

Carlson’s PD Grade 3Z solution is composed of an integrated IP69K-rated GNSS sensor, Carlson’s rugged Windows-based control box, Carlson PDGrade, a 3D positioning software developed specifically for piling applications and a specialized laser sensor that allows precision elevation accuracy.

With the addition of elevation accuracy, the solar piling workflow can be both simplified and accelerated. Checking elevation with the setup of lasers for each row is eliminated, and costly welding and cutting is greatly diminished. While driving, the machine operator views real-time alignment on-screen with plan, as-built and delta measurements, and pile reports in CSV or PDF formats are generated.

PD Grade 3Z can operate as a standalone system, or as part of a fleet environment, and integrates into Carlson’s complete solar workflow solution, and has a three-year warranty.

News item from Carlson Machine Control